


the monsters are alright

by potted_music



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: I'm in it for schmoop, Lovecraftian, M/M, Pre-Canon, have you accepted Harry Hart as your personal saviour?, inexorable tentacles are inexorable, soul-bonding is totally a horror trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3627891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potted_music/pseuds/potted_music
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Because every fandom needs an H.P. Lovecraft fusion, right?]</p><p>As ruined weekends go, Merlin thinks with mounting despair, nothing quite beats being dumped by the love of your life and landing on babysitting duty minding the eldritch horror too ancient to have a name in any language, living or dead. The eldritch horror insists that Merlin call him Harry.</p><p> </p><p>[dunkelgrau, an unbelievably brilliant & amazing soul, has two gorgeous portraits of the EldritchHorror!Harry at her tumblr for all your tentacled!Harry needs: <a href="http://erebusodora.tumblr.com/post/115935924646/so-today-ive-read-a-fiction-story-and">a formal portrait,</a> and <a href="http://erebusodora.tumblr.com/post/118554280626/because-this-story-was-delicious">the eldritch horror as a damsel in distress</a><br/>She also has a BAMF!Merlin, who's intense and totally unimpressed with whatever eldritch things life might throw at him: <a href="http://erebusodora.tumblr.com/post/116149277786/a-companion-piece-for-this-one-because-the-voices">this way for licking your laptop, lads and ladies</a> </p><p>Bow to your fanart overlord, and be merry.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Turns out the monster has a sweet tooth, Merlin thinks with mounting exasperation. He fills out the last batch of forms while the monster finishes off his emergency storage of snacks, previously neatly secreted behind a shredder crowned with a dead plant.

"Of course, you'll have to start buying more milk chocolate. Your tastes leave a lot to be desired," says the monster, unwrapping the last of Merlin's 96% cacao Godiva chocolates, his one earthly indulgence. The monster licks his fingers in a manner that was probably meant to be suggestive, yet comes off as exceedingly silly. There's a smear of chocolate on his bottom lip, and Merlin's almost tempted to wipe it off just to see his reaction. He, too, can play this game like a pro. 

Looking Merlin straight into the eyes, the monster makes a show of licking his lips. Harry, Merlin corrects himself. The monster's name is Harry, and he'd better get used to it. Who'd have thought that he had not a care in the world just yesterday, he thinks with astonishment. Of course, the blame's squarely on Kathleen.

The ban on personal calls from the compound had as much to do with keeping the phone bills under control as it did with security concerns, he thought vindictively as he hiked down to the village the evening before to have his Saturday pint and call Kathleen from the phone booth next to the pub.

The phone kept ringing for so long that he almost decided that she must be out with the girls, Shannon maybe. She finally answered right as he was about to hang up. Her voice was brimming with barely quenched laughter, and he broke into a grin at the sound. God, he missed her.

He knew something was wrong the moment she recognized his voice, and fell silent. "Love," she said tentatively, "there's something I've been meaning to tell you-"

The flurry of thoughts raced through his mind: is her landlord finally making good of his promises to get her evicted? Or is it about that time back in June when his condom broke? Is that it? Because if it is, he thought with a mixture of horror and pride, he's not ready to become a father, but he'll get this sorted, he would have to ask Kathleen to leave Glasgow, find her a nice place down here at the village, tie the knot, and, if he's up for promotion by Christmas- Wrapped up in his private panic, he almost missed it when she said, "We should break up."

"Oh," he said stupidly.

With disarming confidence that he always found endearing, she said, "It's not like we are really dating anymore anyways. You knew it wouldn't work out."

Thing is, he realized clenching his fists, he really, really did not, and now he felt all the more of a fool for it. With a passion of a man who was denied it one time too many, he longed for stability, and went with the flow with dignity, like it was the highest virtue. Kathleen, voluble and holding a firm, deeply felt opinion on most everything in the universe and then some, was a constancy in his life, soothing both in her very physical presence and in her willingness to guide him through all the drastic changes that he did not want, but had to undergo. Kathleen was a good thing, a real thing, so why would he contemplate the possibility of change?

"It's just, I cannot subsist on a weekly phone call and a weeks' vacation in Brighton off-season, once in a blue moon, when you feel like it. I'm sorry love, I really cannot," she said, sensing his doubts, and then he heard a toilet flush in the background, and the distant rattling of windowpanes as a tram passed outside her house. Pressing his forehead to the cool glass of the phone booth, he closed his eyes and pictured her tiny flat: mismatched chipped china and rickety flea market furniture, a whiff of paint from one of her endless redecorating projects, a place that he, faute de mieux, called their home.

"Right," he said, for there was precious little else to be said.

"I can mail you your things, if you tell me your address-"

"Ditch them," he said softly, and hung up with more impact than the beat-up receiver deserved. Belatedly, he realized that Kathleen must still have all his childhood mementoes, the well-worn books that he loved, rusty toy soldiers; but he did not have it in him to call her back.

When Arthur suddenly summoned him the next day and offered a much higher security clearance ("the level of clearance reserved for the royal family, yours truly and a limited number of directly affected persons, most of them dead," the man enunciated, looking at Merlin down his nose), it was a no-brainer. As Arthur smugly specified that that level of clearance came with much higher risks, Merlin put Kathleen's name down as his next of kin for one last time, thinking petulantly that, should he not make it, the compensation would allow her to quit her shitty reception job and get a nicer place with whoever the lucky bloke was. Problem was, he thought of the danger more in terms of _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ , when he should have been thinking _The Creature from the Black Lagoon_.

It's usually curiosity that leads men to this kind of predicament, Merlin reflects distantly, observing Harry out of the corner of his eye. Curiosity, or a quest for knowledge, or ambitions too sharp for the confines of just one mortal life. Going down to the tune of petulance, self-pity and a broken heart feels almost anticlimactic. But then, aren't there supposed to be perks? Even Faust got a girl out of the deal, Merlin reasons. He is less inclined to feel sorry for himself now, since self-pity is what got him into the mess in the first place, but still, what a right mess this is. Nothing quite beats being assigned babysitting duty minding the eldritch horror too ancient to have a name in any language, living or dead. 

To be completely honest, at first Merlin was not even sure if this was not some convoluted test gone too far. Shoot your dog. Pretend you trust your boss enough to believe the deeply unsettling bullshit about reality always ready to split along the seams, about the patient darkness in which unreason lurks, about the old and hungry emaciated things gnawing on their own bones half a breath away from the thin sands of our world, and about the old betrayal. Merlin was efficient enough at reading people to know that Arthur himself believed this beyond the shadow of a doubt, but even the most reasonable men have a cracking point, and there were all those rumours about Arthur's captivity in Cambodia back in the early days of Khmer Rouge, which might well explain and excuse the harmless fancy of a more esoteric sort.

"This is the incantation," said Arthur, sliding a piece of paper to Merlin across the table. He expected something more majestic, but it is cheap lined paper, covered in shaky lettering. "It would be for the best if you memorized it at your earliest convenience."

Merlin squinted at the letters; the text was written in Latin script, but it was not English, nor any other language that he could easily identify. 

"It is still spoken by some beings, deep in the forgotten and lost places. Ghouls, we would probably call them. Those that feed on the dead, or on their dreams, anyway," said Arthur with more tenderness than such a pronouncement would usually merit. "The incantation will bind it to you, and it knows how to complete the ritual. Such grounding in this reality grants it, and you, by extension, greater power. Of course, once it dies, you die with it, and vice versa, but each incarnation has the life expectancy of an average human, and it is roughly your age, so it should not greatly impact your prospects."

The practicalities of soul bonding with a slightly unhinged elder god were not what Merlin had in mind for the evening; neither is this the kind of stability that he so treasured, but he is professional enough not to laugh out loud. 

When he is introduced to the thing, it is deeply anticlimactic. It is perfectly human-shaped, a minor blessing; in fact, it is a young man in a black jacket and striped semi-formal trousers, no different at all from the traditional Kingsman stock. Merlin knows the type: crisp, polished, smart enough not to be a nuisance at parties, but not smart enough to cause trouble. As Arthur enquires after his father's horses and his mother's health, Merlin, who did not believe in god or gods, is nonetheless slightly disappointed. As Arthur pats the young man on the shoulder and leaves them to it, Merlin is running through the current roster of agents, trying to figure out which one might eventually replace the evidently mad boss.

"I don't think we have much of a choice, so we might as well get along," says the young man in a clipped tone that screams years of public school, and stretches his hand out for a handshape. "You can call me Harry."

"Merlin," he curtly nods, "Nice to meet you."

Clutching a bundle of paperwork on both the current assignment and the long overdue follow-ups for several earlier missions to his chest, Merlin leads the monster to his office, where Merlin's stash of sweets keeps him occupied for a while, after which he just stares at Merlin unblinkingly.

Merlin does not know how to start a conversation without addressing Arthur's evident madness, and Harry certainly isn't offering him any ways out either. As Merlin is about to ask if the man was assigned a room at the compound or if he had separate lodgings arranged for him down at the village, something catches his eye.

Oh shit, he thinks with crystal clarity, Arthur was telling him the truth all along. Blurred by the flickering light of his lamp, but still undeniably there, barely out of reach, swaying and dancing, is the monster's shadow, filling more space than a shadow of a slim young man has any right to. Merlin casts about for a secondary source of light that could have caused this effect, but there's nothing. Mesmerized, he leans forward and reaches out his arm. 

As he plunges into the deeper shimmering shade, there's a change in the texture of air, a certain biting brittle quality to it, and then he's gasping for breath as it hits him all at once: the sharp, almost painful awareness of the distance towards the dozing things believed to be stars, of the uneasy slumber of cold darkness stretched between them, and then, finally, the faded realization that his voice would never reach them. How do you deal, you poor devil, he wants to shout, sliding his palms over the patches of shadows, over the pulsing wisps and strands that so obviously did not belong, torn out as they were, ragged and bleeding, out of a richer tapestry of a different space and time. Merlin runs his fingers over them reverently, in mixed marvel and pity, probing and soothing.

A moan catches in the monster's throat as its back arches, and there's a blush creeping down his neck. "If you do go on," he says huskily, "I'd better get undressed. Wouldn't want to ruin the nice trousers, you know."

Merlin snatches his hand back with a start, flinching, even through his embarrassment, as reality flattens to his shoebox of an office at the loss of contact with the shadow. It's his turn to blush violently. "I'm so sorry, I did not realize-"

"Yes, you just kept touching another person's appendages without asking for permission. Actually, it was rather exciting, so I do encourage you to go on," says the monster, loosening his tie. "I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page."

Great, thinks Merlin. Monsters under the bed are real. He even unwittingly gave one a handjob.

And if they are indeed real, he thinks with silent blind rage, if this is happening, and if the nice young man in front of him is indeed an elder god he is to bond with, how dare Arthur hand him things like that with insufficient explanations, catching him at the lowest point in his short life? "I will have to kill Arthur," he murmurs, clenching his fists. "You'd better not stand in my way either."

"You should really take that chip off your shoulder, you know," the monster says with a sigh. "If you think you have it tough, think twice. Imagine growing up: you hate your aunties and love your pony and blast _Queen_ loud enough to make your butler suspend his professionalism for one deeply-felt scowl, you know, the usual-"

Merlin shakes his head. "No ponies nor butlers in my fond childhood memories, sorry." The monster, however, chooses to ignore him.

"And then you turn twenty and - bam! They inform you that Grandpa Harry, the one from back during Richard the Lionheart's reign, had sticky fingers. Picked up something he shouldn't have out in the desert during the Crusades, brought back what turned out to be a sleeping deity to be incarnated into someone in the family once a generation. The moral of the story is, call British Museum before stealing precious artefacts. More relevantly, they told me, you are the one who lucked out, so scratch all your preexisting plans and go train to be a not-completely-evil overlord while soul-bonding with a surly Scot. Gee, thank you, Grandpa. Maybe I wanted to become a virtuoso pianist before all this hit. Maybe I was really good at it."

"Well, did you?" asks Merlin, making an effort to relax his set shoulders.

"No," the monster huffs, "but the point still holds. This whole free will concept that our Western civilization's so big on? Gone out of the window before I was born."

"You poor privileged thing," drawls Merlin, trying not to think of the breath-taking loneliness among the stars. "So, now that you've mentioned it, bonding. Do we do it now?"

"My, but we barely know each other," Harry grins. "Although, in the Biblical sense of the word, now that you've-"

Merlin bats at him with a rolled-up newspaper. Making a show of covering his head, the monster laughs, "I'd rather you took me out for drinks first."

That he can do, Merlin thinks, making a mental note to buy more chocolates.


	2. Chapter 2

Merlin knows enough about dispatching of bodies without a trace to sit up straighter at the sight of protective covering on the floor, an assortment of hand saws and the manacles that are obviously not a part of the original decoration scheme of the palazzo. It might have been years since Merlin regaled a museum with his presence, but he has strong suspicions that this set-up does not belong. Calmly so as not to spook his ward, Merlin commands, "Get out. Now."

A sudden blurring of the feed from the glasses implies that Harry nodded, for all the good that it did. He keeps sauntering around the masked and hooded crowd, obligingly turning his head to let Merlin better appreciate the situation. The order convenes at Palazzo Te. Even over the grainy feed, Merlin is made uncomfortable by the walls, covered ceiling to floor in depictions of titans writhing in pain, teeth the size of Harry's head gnashed in agony, bulging veins and muscles ready to burst their sweaty skin.

Clutching his fists so tight that his knuckles go white, Merlin silently curses Arthur. You'd think that, once you laid your hands on something roughly equivalent to a nuke, you would want to use it sparingly, maybe save it for extra-special occasions, right? Arthur, however, believed that an extra pair of hands was an extra pair of hands, even if said hands came attached to an old deity with a sweet tooth, and sent Harry on a routine mission to Mantova. 

"It would do you good to develop rapport on assignment," Arthur said, with his unbroken serenity begging for a fist to the jaw.

Merlin went over the documents twice, and, having found nothing out of the ordinary, asked.

"Oh, nothing that our philosophy wouldn't dream of," Arthur waved away his concerns. "This is your garden-variety cult for the bored, not particularly unsettling even, as this things go. It would not have showed up on our radars if not for its tenuously established contacts with one international human trafficking ring."

"Sex rituals, my favourite!" exclaimed Harry, leaning over Merlin's shoulder to look at the files, and then added with the joy of someone who's obviously never been on one, "Is this a honeypot mission?"

"You are to appraise. If at all possible, your appraisal is to be conducted without personal interference," said Arthur, barely masking his distaste, and Merlin, who would have otherwise been inclined to concur with his opinion, felt a sudden surge of anger. How dare Arthur send an obviously untrained young man into the field, and jibe at his inexperience?

Merlin stilled his nerves by running over Harry's equipment one time too many.

"Here's a Kingsman gun, invisible on most metal detectors, extra light. You are only there to observe, so don't whip it out unless something goes seriously wrong and I tell you to. On a related note, don't disconnect your earpiece under any circumstances. Your mic is sewn into your collar. Make sure you don't spill anything on it: we have not yet managed to make it fully waterproof." Merlin tweaked at Harry's collar, admiring his handiwork.

"Stop fussing," the monster huffed, "I'm the most horrifying thing around here."

Merlin rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, but the title's reserved for Percival's fashion sense. Gawain's singing voice comes a close second. If you are lucky, you might come in third, but that's not a given. So, for now you are just my agent, I'm getting you through this, and if I like mother-henning, who's there to stop me?"

Arthur might be the one pulling the strings, but it is ultimately the handler who is stuck watching his agent stroll into the lion’s den. Merlin greedily scrutinizes Harry’s every movement, searching for a sign of the otherness that he witnessed, trying to reach deeper than skin or blood. There’s nothing there. At a glance, Harry's no different from any of the other young Kingsmen, bred for generations for looking good in formal wear and landing a modest diplomatic position abroad, if not a seat in Parliament. He is brimming with the strung exuberant energy of a young dog, and there’s no cold old darkness to him. Merlin is starting to doubt his perception.

"Harry, there's no time for that," Merlin breathes out, as Harry continues his saunter around the room. Serpentine shapes of plants, deformed atrocities and chubby little angels dance over the walls. There's a cluster of symbols on the floor that their consultants might have a field day with, but saving your assets comes before intel-gathering. 

Harry completes his leisurely stroll and reaches the door right as the crowd rises in one silent, carefully choreographed wave. Merlin, who does not like the look of it, has barely enough time to breathe the sigh of relief before Harry rattles the door lightly and helpfully offers, "Locked. But I can watch?" 

“No you damn well can’t. Break it.”

Turning towards the hooded figures, Harry raises his arm. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I really need to pee. Would any of you be so kind as to show me the way to the toilet?”

So, this is how it ends, Merlin thinks, and, with an effort, takes a sip of his tea as the crowd starts moving on Harry. He got a glimpse of something distant and marvelous. In several days, he will get a box with the mangled remains - for all its issues, Kingsman is unerringly intent on getting the bodies back - and someone from the liaisons division will write a letter to the family, a perfect balance of formality, sympathy and strategic omissions. And, if all that bullshit was true, which Merlin already starts to doubt, soon a baby will be born, and its shadow will reach blindly for the dead stars.

“Agent, you are authorized to shoot,” he says, his voice steady.

One figure steps out of the crowd and reaches for Harry. There’s no guessing what’s secreted under that robe: given enough motivation and a certain degree of dexterity, one could probably fit a fucking grenade launcher under it. Not that the situation called for a grenade launcher, Merlin thinks frantically, clutching the edge of his table.

“Oh thank you, that is most kind of you,” Merlin can hear the smile in Harry’s voice, and, instead of committing any of the acts of violence that his imagination so helpfully supplied, the figure unlocks the door and opens it for Harry.

Merlin blesses the charmers. Not being a particularly charming man himself, he has little trust or patience for those that are, but as long as charm and luck can get his agent out of the situation where he himself would have ended up in a bloody mess on the floor, he’s inclined to count his blessings.

“I hope that they will wait for us,” Harry chatters inanely, looking back over his shoulder at his convoy. “Would not want to miss the feeding of the Grail because of my bladder.”

“ _A_ grail,” the convoy corrects him gloomily. “None of us would call one of the minor grails the Grail, not when we’ve been searching for so long-”

“Sorry, my Italian’s horribly rusty,” Harry chuckles. “Between you and me, so’s Latin of the Grand Master. His pronunciation would make Virgil roll in his grave, weeping.”

“You don’t get it,” says the convoy, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around. “You are not one of us. Time to start talking.”

A knife flashes mere inches away from Harry’s face. One on one is decent odds of getting out unscathed, Merlin reasons, especially when the opponent is so obviously underestimating you. Mesmerized, he watches Harry reach out and cup the convoy’s face, and then, watch on is all he can do.

Indignation flashes over the convoy’s face, anger makes his eyes narrow, but then, something else rises up from the depths, his nondescript middle-aged face contorting into something pained and primal. Horror, Merlin thinks, but immediately corrects himself: this is not horror. This is disappointment, the kind of crushing disillusionment you might feel upon realizing that every single thing you believed true no longer held, lost into a drafty world from which every last vestige of knowledge or safety was stripped. The veins in the convoy’s eyes start bursting, his mouth gapes open in a silent scream.

“Shhhh, my dear,” says Harry softly, pressing a caressing finger over the convoy’s lips, “I’m sorry, it won’t be long.”

The convoys screams and screams, not a single sound ever escaping from his lips. His mouth splits at the edges, rivulets of blood trickling down to his chin, but he cannot take his blood-shot eyes off the thing in front of him. Through the glasses feed, it seems like he is looking Merlin straight into the eyes, and he realizes that, whatever it is that the convoy saw, he would rather not cross paths with it. As the guard crumbles to the floor, Harry asks, “Okay, where do I go now?”

As a matter of occupational hazard, Merlin knows better than to ask questions he does not want to know the answers to, so he briskly leads his agent through the palazzo. As the monster plunges into a moat, Merlin shudders at the sight of the pale forms underwater. The dead, he thinks, and then realizes with a sigh of relief that they are fish, the patient carp floating up from the depths with their bovine dull curiosity.

*

While he waits for the monster to be flown back to the compound, he hits the gym to work off the adrenaline. Afterwards, he jerks off quickly and efficiently, thinking first of Kathleen, although now that she dumped him, imagining her pale body seems like an invasion of privacy, and then about nothing at all but the pure unadulterated joy of being alive.

By the time he watches the plane land, huddled against the piercing September drizzle to the side of the runway, he is ready to handle the situation.

"Do you want to talk about your first kill?" he asks, after having hugged the monster and led it back to his office.

"Why?" asks Harry, reaching for his stash of chocolates. "Oh, milk chocolates, good."

"Because it is your first kill. Right now, you are supposed to be in shock."

"Would you feel more comfortable if I were?"

Something shifts in his face almost imperceptibly, a minute straining at the corners of his eyes, lips pinched slightly. This is much closer to what he expects by way of symptoms. Merlin blinks, trying to evaluate if he could have missed them before. The monster relaxes and pats him on the shoulder.

"Offended as I am that you expect me to beat myself up as a way to comfort you, I need a drink more than I need a good pout, so no hard feelings." Merlin acquiesces. 

Being the only entertainment in the village, _The Nag's Head_ is its weekday's usual: a curious mixture of Kingsman agents playing up the James Bond angle, the long-suffering locals who by now are used to most everything, and several backpacking tourists who are instantly recognizable by a slightly dazed look in their eyes. Nodding to his colleagues and acquaintances, Merlin heads for the corner table that he has come to think of as his.

Three shots of cheap whiskey, downed in quick succession, finally make his hands stop shaking. He might have been handed a monster, but, if they are to coexist, it is time to establish some ground rules. He looks up at the monster, who seems perfectly content nursing his pint of Guinness, and says, "When I tell you something, you obey, no questions asked, no 'maybe later, if I feel like it.' Your life and, more importantly, my promotion depend on that."

Harry breaks into a toothy grin. "Good, I like my men pushy."

"Do you want us to talk about your death wish?" Merlin drawls. Harry seems utterly relaxed, his shadow pooled around his ankles.

“There wasn’t ever any danger,” the monster says, wiping beer foam off his lips. “Had I so much as nodded, they would have killed each other to be with me. In the purely Biblical sense.”

"You sound exactly like someone I know," Merlin says, and excuses himself for a moment. Having made sure that he's well out of Harry's line of sight, because there's pathetic and then there's pathetic, he slips out of the pub and heads for the phone booth to call Kathleen.

There's not much he can tell her, except that he misses her, he wishes it worked out differently, the weather's shit, but what else would you expect this time of year. He just wants to hear her voice one last time, and he's willing to pay for that in regret come next morning.

"I wouldn't if I were you, mate. What's done is done. I'm sorry." The monster must have slipped out through the back door, the bastard. He is leaning casually against the wall, the shadows dancing around him. Merlin steps into them when he tries to brush past the man, and is rooted to the spot by the staggering loneliness, his own and that of the lost thing trapped light years away from anything that ever stood a chance of understanding its purpose. He cannot breathe; his heart races at the serious cardiac issues pace. Biting on the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood, he tries to suck in some air through clenched teeth; not at once, not immediately, but he manages. He clenches his fists painfully, and then, with an effort, relaxes them. Closing his eyes, he tries to embrace it. He would be a liar if he said that there was no beauty to it, because beautiful it was, astoundingly so. In the absolute emptiness of space not yet cluttered with time, there's a distant music ensnaring those that roam beyond into the desolate nooks; what he, Merlin, would perceive as inanimate and dead, to the extent that he thought about these things at all, was astonishingly, vibrantly, joyously alive. It is the most beautiful view he was ever honoured with, but it just happens to be a beauty distant and alien to anything human, and he does not stand a chance to apprehend the merest fraction of it.

He feels so lonely and lost and sorry, for himself and for the prodigal monster, and if there's anything he can do- he palms the paper with the incantation and starts chanting, his tongue clumsy around the ancient syllables. 

He gets to maybe the third word before Harry grabs him by the collar and bangs him against the pub wall, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make his world spin with inebriation and sudden movement. The shadows retreat. Finally, he can breathe again, and he gasps at the cold night air gratefully. The monster's eyeing him with his head cocked to the side.

Finally, the monster clucks its tongue. "If this here is any indication, the part that they did not tell you about bonding is, you will most likely get your mind wiped. I will have to lug your drooling form around, which would cramp my style somewhat, but still, that's a reasonable tradeoff for unlimited power. Would suck for you though."

It takes some time for Merlin to process this, high as he is on oxygen and the singing of the stars. When the words finally sink in, he asks "Are you serious?", although he thinks that he knows the answer.

The monster lets out an uncomfortable little laugh. "Grandma Virginia was a drooling husk of a woman. Not that it bothered anybody much, not back in the day. To the best of my knowledge, my father was born three years after the bonding. Make of it what you will."

Merlin stares at Harry with a mixture of queasiness and disbelief, reminded of the crumbled form of the guard back at the pallazo. The monster pats him on the shoulder with genuine affection.

"And Arthur never saw fit to inform me of the possibility."

"Whom would you rather trust: the boss of an international spy ring notorious for its controversial stance on extrajudicial executions, or an ancient monster that has been around since before time was a thing?"

Merlin rolls his eyes.

"Hint: it's the monster. The monsters always stand to lose the most."

"And, if the bonding does go wrong, is there anything, anything at all left of the original personality?" Merlin asks shakily.

Harry lets go of his shoulders for a moment to make a squeezing motion like he is wringing out a sponge. "Mush," he says. "Quite unsavoury. I wouldn't say that it's inevitable, but it is, unfortunately, rather likely."

At that, all the fight goes out of Merlin, and he relaxes into Harry's firm grip. No matter how good he got, and good he was, one of the best even, at least amongst his generation, for Arthur and the likes of him it would not matter one fig, because his background would always make him expendable.

"Come on mate, let's go get you drunk," says Harry, like that's the end of it.

And they do just that. Merlin, who, for reasons that have as much to do with prudence as they do with his family history, usually abstains but for his semi-ritualistic Saturday pint, feels wobbly after his third. He is suddenly hilarious, light-hearted, the heart of any company he would deign to accost, and so's Harry. He tries to climb on the table to recite Robert Burns, Harry pulls him down, then he proceeds to vomit on Harry's Oxfords, and it is way funnier than it has any right to be. 

"I'm not taking your shoes off for you," Harry murmurs, dragging him back to the compound, and that is the last thing that Merlin remembers. It is the first night in over a week when he actually sleeps.

Harry keeps his word, Merlin realizes when he wakes up in his bed, but with his shoes still on. A soothingly warm body is pressed to his side, someone's thigh clamped uncomfortably to his morning wood. Through a blaring headache, he turns his head minutely, so as not to wake the person next to him. Harry, still dressed, is asleep in his best octopus rendition, with his arm and leg slung over Merlin. The monster's drooling over his pillow, Merlin realizes with exasperated affection, cautiously crawling out of his bed.


	3. Chapter 3

After the Mantova fiasco with the Knights Templar, Arthur leaves them to their own devices for a while. Merlin gets a blackboard and writes "House Rules" at the top, underlined twice. Sticking his tongue out with concentration, he sets the letters down carefully, one by one: "When on mission, thou shalt obey me implicitly." Chuckling, Harry adds in Gothic script and red chalk, "Thou shalt provide me with milk chocolates in sufficient quantity." "No hair products in the office when I'm testing the new hand grenades" is added after one rather unfortunate incident; Merlin's so shaken that he misspells "grenaids," which Harry corrects, and adds "(but you do look dashing without the eyebrows)" below. They have epic darts tournaments down at _The Nag's Head,_ and Merlin lets Harry win so far, to make his final victory all the more staggering. Eventually, Merlin takes to dragging Harry to the gym with him, because he has to keep himself entertained. Untrained and unpolished Harry might be, but he follows the instructions with the plasticity of clay, parries the hits almost before Merlin can think of them, and powers through on sheer stupid thrill of the race long after any human body would have told one to stop.

As they are leaving the gym one day, Merlin notices that Harry's limping.

"S'nothing," he tries to bat away Merlin's prodding at his rapidly swelling knee, but Merlin's had more than his fair share of headstrong agents to know how to manhandle one into the medical unit.

"Your nothing sounds a whole lot like badly sprained knee ligaments to me," he says after the nurse leaves, having instructed Harry to rest the knee for the next 72 hours. Harry crosses his arms over his chest defensively.

"This does not matter, okay? This is not the body that matters. And I don't like being prodded at. I don't like keeping me at bay," says Harry, finally letting his shadows flutter free and settling into a rewarding little sulk. "You can hold my ice pack, thank you very much."

Merlin obeys before he has time to think. Without looking up at Harry's face, he carefully weighs each word. "Remember, you said that you wanted to be a virtuoso pianist before you were informed that you'll have to be an eldritch horror."

"I didn't." Harry's not looking at him either, his chin set in defiance.

"Well, what _did_ you want to be?" Merlin asks, carefully touching Harry's knee. His cool skin feels tender, clammy, painfully human.

"Nothing, okay? Nothing." Harry shifts uncomfortably under his touch. "But you still signed up for me, if for all the wrong reasons. You are obsessively ambitious and driven by the craving to prove yourself to anybody who does not manage to escape, because, deep down, you know that you will never be good enough, and, in all truth, you will not, and you were so lonely, and you thought that it would be nice to have someone who would not have a choice but to stay with you, and you would have been absolutely fine with that, because, truth be told, you do not really care about people other than as your audience, do you? Well, nice try mate, sorry I'm not your nice little ego boost fantasy."

"Oh please," Merlin huffs, and, closing his eyes, reaches out for the shadowy tendrils snaking around Harry's head.

It comes easier this time, now that he knows what to expect. The monster is tremendous, but it has been squeezed into too cramped a space for too long a time, and it learned by necessity to live on tiptoe, huddled, its elbows pressed into its ribs. There are pressure ulcers there, fraying dark patches where there used to be stardust and the blissful merciful void, and it no longer remembers how to be grand or kind, those things fleeting through the shallower waters of its consciousness like light-swift and skittish migrant shawls of fish. A stunted and patchwork thing it is, his monster, his chimaera, and it is so cold that Merlin cannot sense a human boy in it. If this is what bonding feels like, magnified and inescapable, he thinks, it is no wonder that they all go mad.

Harry tenses under his touch, but does not shake off his hand, which he counts as a good sign. Finally, he lets go and just sits there, his palms on his knees, tingling with loss. Merlin does not know what else is there to be said, so he drifts back to the safe and familiar waters of their shared experiences, fast becoming useful touchstones. "What kind of name is Knights Templar for a self-respecting secret cult anyway?"

"I know, right?" Harry laughs. "No Christian humility, not much by way of original thought either. When we create a cult for the adoration of me, we would have to pick a nice, sensible name for it."

Merlin cannot be sure if Harry is indeed joking, so he does not pry. They keep up the easy back-and-forth banter until dinner is brought, discussing the cult's unfortunate fashion sense and their proliferation of grails as an obvious influence of the rising consumerism. Merlin snatches Harry's jelly, holding the cup out of his reach.

"Now's the time for you to admit that you did not mean what you said earlier."

"But I did, to the last word. I also did not say that there wasn't more to you." Harry says, all hurt innocence and deep soulful eyes.

"I _am_ good enough," Merlin clarifies with more force than genuine conviction would require.

"Not to yourself, you are not," says Harry with a smug little grin, and snatches the jelly out of his grip.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I played fast and loose with the history of Mary King's Close. If you are nerdier on the subject than I am, I'm really sorry! At least the conspicuous absence of tourists is indeed historically accurate for the mid-80s (it was not developed into a tourist trap till the early 90s, or so the internet tells me.)

"This assignment is for you," says Arthur without taking his eyes off Harry for a second, and slides the files towards them. Apparently, the disappearances off the Royal Mile started several months ago, but initially they were sporadic enough to be swept under the carpet. The first victims were troubled teenagers, drifters, always old enough to be classified as potential runaways rather than missing children. Judging by the slim files from the police database, they did not garner much attention from the overworked local officers past the initial reports, not until months later, when the bigger picture started emerging. Some of them might even genuinely be runaways, holed up in some squat in Manchester or Liverpool, but the police decided to include anything potentially related.

The disappearances picked up by late August, occasionally spiking at two or three per weekend; Merlin vaguely remembers Kathleen talking about it once while painting her toenails, but his interest in the news ran towards the more global and covert side of the spectrum, so he did not pay her much attention at the time. The investigation seemed to have stalled: despite miles of accumulated tapes from interrogation rooms, not a useful clue surfaced. The usual suspects were themselves apprehensive, if not outright scared. It was as if people were melting into thin air, here one moment, gone the next. 

The first bodies were not discovered until mid-September, which is when the investigation finally picked up speed, prompted along by the journalists' informal competition for the most gruesome moniker for the killer. Merlin likes to uphold his image of an unerring professional, which is why he unflinchingly scrutinizes the washed-out Polaroid shots from the crime scene, fighting down the bile rising in his throat.

"If these blood splatters here are any indication, no way this was postmortem, right?" he asks, making an effort to swallow.

Harry touches the picture with one long finger and drags it along the tabletop towards him. Flayed bodies, Merlin notes, look indecent in a way no living body ever could. In a manner that can only be construed as lewd, they lay bare that which shall remain hidden, off-white muscles, fatty tissues, veins like tapeworms.

"Was not a knife they were using, right?" asks Merlin, squinting at the close-ups in boundless gratitude. The close-ups, at least, are just tissue samples, artistically interesting patchy surfaces rather than human beings pushed in death past shame or dignity. "It was something abrasive, sandpaper, maybe?"

"Something quite a lot like shark teeth," Harry grins, patting him on the shoulder. "This was probably quicker than it looks. Pain shock is a bloody marvelous thing we should all be grateful for."

"The skins were never found," Arthur adds helpfully.

Which is how they end up in Edinburgh, staggering through the steep closes off the Royal Mile against the gusts of wind. When wind throws fistfuls of icy raindrops into their faces, breathing becomes painful. Merlin has only ever been to Edinburgh on school trips or with Kathleen, and now the city seems off, somehow smaller and darker, more angular, like beat-up shoes he long grew out of, or people he once loved but did not anymore. The closes smell of cooking grease and piss.

"You know more than you are letting on, and Arthur knows that you know," Merlin says, a propos of nothing.

"My heart is an open book, filled with lurid pictures, blood, and connective tissue, all splayed open for you to read," Harry purrs, striding on with intent.

"You do know what is going on. I don't like being left out of the loop." Merlin started the trip livid, anger licking at his capacity for judgment. It was unpleasant and unbefitting an agent, not to mention exhausting and inefficient, so he did his best to quench it, pushing everything that was him to the background, well behind his professional front of an alert watchdog.

"Yes," Harry just nods. "So, unless you know of any exceptionally good pubs around here, might as well get this done and over with."

"Care to share?" he asks, slowly breathing out through his rage, as Harry drags him ever deeper into the warren of narrow branching streets.

"Nah, not really. Right, here we are," says Harry, picking the lock to a house with boarded-up windows and graffitied walls.

"I'm not going in blind," Merlin leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest and firmly planting his feet on the ground. "You cannot expect me to barge in, guns blazing, against- what is it that we are up against?"

Harry, already walking down the stairs to the basement, turns towards him. "Oh, no need for guns. You are to appraise," he adds in a passable imitation of Arthur's surly tone. "These are my- I guess you could call them friends."

"I'm not going in blind," Merlin repeats.

"You are angry," says Harry with a spark of curiosity. "Trust me. You expect me to trust you on missions, but can you trust me once for a change?"

"No."

"Oh, because I'm the big scary monster, is that what you are saying?" He huffs, his face already pulling into a sulk.

"No, because I'm not in the job of trusting. Never were, never saw reasons to be," Merlin breathes out through gritted teeth. "There's a reason why I almost dropped out of the marines training before Kingsman approached me."

"Be that as it may," says Harry, and, turning on his heels, briskly walks on.

For a moment, Merlin seriously contemplates staying behind, the bastard, and Arthur, and the whole job be damned for treating him like a push-over, but then rushes forward to catch up, pulling his flashlight out of his breastpocket as he goes. Harry was entrusted him, and hence, he is Merlin's, for better or for worse, he thinks stubbornly with a familial possessiveness that does not necessitate liking or trust. They get through this together, or not at all, and he can kick his ass later, if need be. Merlin catches up with Harry at the bottom of the stairs, and Harry smiles gratefully, squinting at his flashlight.

"I don't have to like it." Merlin scowls, vindictively shining the flashlight in his face. "Or you, for that matter."

"So you don't."

Having reached the basement that, by all signs, at some point served as a squat to a particularly raucous crowd, Harry finds another door, and picks the lock. Merlin inconspicuously draws his gun. The door opens onto a narrow corridor that soon leads them to a hallway. The next door is stuck, and Harry pushes it open with his shoulder. Stale damp air floods in on them, dense and sharp, and with it, a smell of decay, a whiff of something messily alive, excreting, shedding. As his training takes over, Merlin knocks Harry to the side and lunges forward, flashlight in his left hand, gun in his right.

The door opens onto a wider space; when Merlin points his flashlight up, its wan light never reaches the ceiling. As he turns frantically every which way, scanning the horizon uneasily, he is made ever more uncomfortable by the view. It is a narrow winding street, lined with crammed rows of houses, once well-kempt, now abandoned and sad like small animal bones. The traces of a rushed exodus can still be read on their faces: a line of clothes left out to dry, now little more than tatters, here, shutters left unlocked there, a pan left out on the windowsill waiting for the owners to come back.

"Nice place, huh?" asks Harry, sauntering out like he owns the place. "They sealed it up after the Black Plague, kept building on top of it. Does not mean that everybody left."

He whistles, and the sound does not carry far, stifled in the dense air. Centuries later, Merlin notes, and it still smells like the stables, a warm, earthy animal smell, making a mock of the dead place. His nerves are on edge.

They set out, Harry leading the way at a leisurely stroll, and Merlin trying to keep pace with his gun at the ready, should the need arise.

"Would you stop wagging that about?" Harry winces, as Merlin takes the lead when turning a corner. "If this is some sort of hyper-compensation, I can assure you that it is not the size that matters."

Merlin is well past the point of taking offense, all his senses trained on just one goal: getting through, getting out. He often jumps at the sound of their own muffled footsteps. As he is about to ask where they are going, there's a distant flicker of green light far ahead. In a heartbeat, he kills his flashlight, dropping it in his rush, and shoves Harry to the ground before the flashlight even clatters on the pavement. At least he's not making an easy target of them, strolling about with neat illumination, begging to be shot.

"Will-o'-the-wisps," Harry chuckles from under him. "We are quite close to Nor' Loch, you know, where they used to dunk the witches. My, how did you ever get field clearance if you keep working yourself into a state like this?"

"Did not. When I'm not babysitting you, I'm a handler," Merlin growls, sweeping the pavement in search of his flashlight. Harry covers his palm with his and squeezes. "Will you stop it?"

"Not doing anything," Harry huffs, "unless you mean breathing."

"This is childish," Merlin tries to yank his hand away, but the grip only grows firmer. "I thought you were well past that age, being an old god and all."

"Uh-huh, if you could just please not move and not freak out for a second. It's skittish," says Harry, moving away, and that's when Merlin realizes that the palm gripping his is scaly, and cold, and has all too many fingers. "Also, it has quite a lot of teeth."

This is the time for me to scream, Merlin thinks distantly, fighting the desire to yank his hand back, or hit out, or shoot. He's frozen to the spot, and so deeply fucked. 

"Found your flashlight," says Harry in what feels like painfully dragging ages, "You might want to close your eyes."

He does not, and regrets it in an instant when the world around him turns from muffled darkness to blazing light. Everything explodes in disorienting swirls of colours. As his eyes grow accustomed to the change and he squints shortsightedly at the space in front of him, Merlin regrets it all over. There's a face staring at him with dead curiosity, not a foot from his eyes. Breathe, he tells himself, instantly sweaty, breathing comes first, a panic attack never killed anyone - _but this thing might_ \- he swallows, savouring the clammy air. Slowly, he closes his eyes and opens them again, reaching for the childishly curious side of him, the side that believes in miracles and is not yet sold on the adult notion that all miracles should be kind.

The thing looks almost human, or, at the very least, the way a human could be drawn by someone who only read about them in scary stories and saw one from afar, in passing, and was horrified. It is spindly in some places and lumpy in others, not in the way that human bones or muscles would support; it is partly covered in sticky scales, but its creator clearly decided that scales were passé about halfway through, and opted for rolls of sagging mucous membranes instead. There are also horns, but they don't look majestic, like they would on a stag, but rather painful, like spikes sticking out of a thing impaled. On its face, it is wearing the withered rotting flayed skin of one of its victims. Fuck screaming, Merlin decides, vomiting is his new priority.

"Don't move," Harry repeats, "told you to close your eyes. Was putting your foot down worth it?"

Merlin notices more movement at the very edge of his vision, out of the corner of his eye, and before he has time to blink, they are all around him, the lumbering awkward beasts. They hiss, and whisper, and probe at the air around him with their grey prehensile tongues. Well, seems like Kathleen _will_ get her new flat, he thinks through rising hysteria, and he's suddenly regretting his decision. Should have donated to some nice charity instead.

Suddenly, the beast clutching his hand withdraws, sits up alertly on its haunches. Harry takes a step forward, whispering softly at it. He walks on, light as a dancer, his arms outstretched, and the monsters pause, and then follow.

They cover him like a wave, wagging their bodies impossibly, craving to touch. Merlin watches, petrified, as they drag their webbed disfigured palms over Harry's face, trailing slime and old blood. Harry tilts his face towards their touches, his eyes closed, cheeks flushed. Slowly, cautiously at first, then faster and faster, he starts to dance.

They worship him, Merlin realizes with dread. And then adds through a surge of stifling laughter: as if Harry needed any extra reasons to enhance his already bloated ego.

Finally, the dance stops, and Harry turns towards him, the beasts crouching at his heels.

"Are they also- gods?" Merlin asks, stuttering over the last word.

"No!" Harry laughs. "No, of course not. You can think of them as puppies."

"I'd rather not," and he's ready to puke at Harry's careless wording. "How do we dispose of them?"

"We don't! We don't kick puppies!" says Harry, protectively stretching his arms out. "I'll just sing them a little lullaby, and then we'll get a nice, if overpriced pint at the Royal Mile, alright?" 

He turns towards his beasts again, and Merlin watches as the shadow tendrils stretch over them, cocooning, embracing, soothing them to sleep. He never saw Harry like this, he realizes: this serene, this protective, this relaxed. Harry whispers to them in a language that sounds like stones sighing with grow pains, rubbing sides in the earth not yet cooled to stillness. He touches their foreheads with his outstretched palm, and they grow quiet.

Merlin does not argue with him till they reach the surface, and by the time they do, everything he saw already starts to seem like a febrile hallucination.

"Those things don't deserve to live," he says, sagging against the wall in a side-street, suddenly bone-weary.

"Why? Because they are not human?" asks Harry, honest curiosity ringing in his voice. "But neither am I, and you were obviously worried about me on the Templars mission. You care about me, so it cannot be that you only care about the humans. And, well, the only difference between them and me is, I find humans new enough to be interesting, while they are uninterested in or incapable of reaching out." 

"No, because they killed," Merlin says, rubbing at his eyes, and then adds in an unhelpful parody of self-help books his mom was so keen on, "You are as human as you choose to be."

Harry's suddenly very shifty, and so very young. Merlin's breath catches.

"Wait. You were never human. All that shit about butlers and a normal childhood- that's all bollocks." He's not even asking, he realizes, for he already knew, even if he was afraid to acknowledge it, not in the least for the realization of how little that would change.

After a pause, Harry finally says, "'I'm an Older God' is hardly a valid conversation starter."

Merlin laughs, and laughs, sliding down to the pavement, and does not know how to stop. Finally, he stretches out his hand, expecting Harry to help him to get up. "You lie because you care. That's certainly a new one."

With a perfectly practiced expression of outraged dignity, Harry enunciates, "I find the need to advertise one's identity a particularly human trait. You style your hair this way or that, you choose this tie or that, and people are supposed to read you, they are supposed to know. I much prefer to lie in wait."

Merlin starts dusting the cobwebs off his jacket. Without looking at Harry, he states, "So, you always knew what you were."

"It's more of a 'When did you know you were gay' situation, not 'When did you realize that your chin is more similar to your gardener's rather than to your father's', alright?" says Harry with great dignity.

Merlin's choking on another surge of laughter, because he still has enough presence of mind to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation, and it is really no time to argue, them covered in dust and slime.

"Is there anything in you that is not-" he fishes for words, and none come.

"Eldritch horror," Harry supplants helpfully. "I really liked that designation."

Merlin rolls his eyes.

"Fine, if you say so. Is there anything to you that is not eldritch horror?"

"The pretty face," says the eldritch horror with utter conviction. "So, how about that pint?"

"Come on, I know just the place," Merlin says, and he does not even feel anything at the realization that the last time he's been there, what already seems like half a lifetime ago, he was with Kathleen. After a moment's pause, he adds, "Come to think of it, you had it so easy, you bastard. At least you have the whole identity and role in life thing figured out."

Harry nods with a happy grin, and suddenly pulls him into a brisk hug. He smells misleadingly human, all afternoon sweat and expensive aftershave.

As they stand at the bar with their pints, Harry says, methodically shredding his beer coaster, "That does not answer the question of what woke them up, or why. Like I said, they don't have any interest in people. I wonder-"

He pauses for a moment, completely withdrawn, and then wild exhilarating anger spills over his features, making his nostrils flutter.

"How very curious. I reached out for the other ones on the isles. They are all gone."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you find that upsetting?" Merlin asks after a pause, treading on thin ice.

For a moment, Harry is perfectly, completely, impossibly still, and then he erupts into a flurry of movement, gesturing wildly, his face twisting as if he's not quite sure what expression the situation calls for. "Of course, I fucking find that fucking upsetting. Wouldn't you feel fucking upset if you woke up one morning only to find the whole population of London gone, stray pets wandering the streets?"

"Right," Merlin says, "We will figure it out."

"You," Harry's glare is scathing. "What do you suggest, we make a nice little poster and put it up at _The Nag's Head_? 'Lost: a phosphorescent blob of cosmic goo. Answers, when in the mood, to the name of The Corrupter of Flesh. If you see it, please call. Or, as the case might be, rest in peace.'"

"Don't you guys have-" Merlin realizes the absurdity of the suggestion right as he starts speaking, and finishes weakly, "-P.O. boxes? Or, I don't know, this nifty new contraption called a phone? Most useful, so I've heard."

Harry covers his face with his palms. For a horrified moment, Merlin thinks that Harry might be crying, and the realization that he might have brought an elder god to tears chills him to the bone, but then Harry raises his head, a thin laugh still on his lips. "You are cute," he says.

"I'm also smart," Merlin acknowledges with great dignity. "Aren't you lucky."

Harry drains the rest of his pint in one nervous gulp, and orders another one.

"I'll do whatever it takes to help," Merlin says, knowing that, in all likelihood, it is not much. "Walk me through this. How does it work? The godhead, I mean?"

Harry stills almost imperceptibly, and, as Merlin's about to say that he's not prying and it's none of his business, he starts talking. Words come slowly, in peevish insufficient groups, cut out to measure a different reality, unfit to describe that which he represents. "There was a war, alright? That's how most stories start, or at least the good ones do. Well, that's the original one, the one that taught us to tell our stories that way. I'm not sure if anyone came out the winner, not in the traditional sense. Point is, some of us got pushed out and back. I cannot even say that we are far from where we started, because space does not work like that, not really."

He reaches out and grabs a napkin, unfolds it on the bar in front of them. "It's all nooks and folds, you see. We were here," he says, poking vigorously at the unfolded surface lined with creases, and then folds it back up again. "And now we are here, not in the space where it all went down, and well before it."

Gesturing, he almost knocks over his beer, and dunks the napkin into the spill, where it swells and slowly disintegrates into cellulose mush. "So, we bide our time, you could say, knowing all the while how it all ends."

"And how does it end?" Merlin asks, touching his fingertips to the soggy napkin.

"With a bang, how else." Harry's laugh is rasping, ruthless. "But we are patient, and we grow better at waiting with each passing day. Still, it is unpleasant, being stuck before everything you treasure or hate, and knowing that you will not reach it until it is too late. Imagine being born decades before that Kathleen of yours-"

"I believe I never told you her name," Merlin says, turning towards Harry. The rest of his life is Kingsman issue: his clothes, his gadgets, his livelihood; the organization could even claim him in his death, for the bodies were seldom released to the next of kin in a form other than ashes. Kathleen, however, was his, and his alone, a carefully guarded secret.

"Oh, but you must have, maybe that one time when you vomited all over my shoes." Harry laughs, and Merlin already knows him well enough to know that he's lying.

"But I did not," he repeats stubbornly, angry at the bastard for prying, and at Arthur for releasing his private records to perfect strangers.

"Fine," Harry huffs finally, pushing a new pint towards Merlin. "Drink up. I'm a god. I read minds. And I can still look you in the eye come morning, because I'm made of stronger stuff."

And this, his nonchalance, his complete disregard for the vulnerability of others, is so much worse than the released confidential records; Merlin never even contemplated the possibility. He thinks of all the Kingsman security protocols that are now compromised in order not to think about himself, that shameful lowest common denominator of humanity, the naked scared being carefully locked up and stored away, now lost to the prodding of the thing that cannot even be called indecent in its otherness. He leans away and closes his eyes. All he can think about at the moment is his stash of chocolates, so carefully hidden and treasured prudently, one frugal piece at a time, when he really needed it; so, this is how Harry found the stash. How very pertinent, Merlin thinks: this is how we live our lives, sparing and savouring our seconds, while he, it, Harry would just burn through them in one glorious blazing burst. 

"I'm not always in your head," Harry places a careful hand on his shoulder, but Merlin shrugs it off. "Untangling all those fleeting thoughts and feelings takes so much effort, I'm honestly not sure if it's worth it."

"This is the moment where I should punch you," Merlin says, "but you would just read that off my mind and duck, would you?"

"I probably would," Harry nods in agreement. "Oh, don't look so insulted. Over the centuries, you'd think that there's little I have not seen, you know?"

Merlin turns to face him head on. "I am so very sorry that I could not offer you anything more fascinating than the boring old me. All my petty little loves and lies and stale second-hand grievances, that trite craving to prove myself- what a joke, all of it. And to think that I actually liked you, for all of five minutes."

"I know you did," says Harry, his shoulders sagging. This is probably as close as he can get to an expression of guilt, or regret.

"Right, because you read my mind," Merlin drawls. "I'm not sure I can, not anymore."

"But you don't need to. That's what you said earlier," Harry flashes him a grin that is all teeth and barely contained rage. "And you were right, you don't need to trust anyone, and I don't need to be liked."

That saddest thing about it is, Merlin notes distantly, Harry's lying, maybe without realizing it himself, but lying nonetheless. Merlin's good enough at reading people to not need to violate their minds. The joke's on the elder god who liked playing people, and was atrociously bad at it. "What is it that you need, then?" Merlin says through a sip of his beer. "Why bother with us at all, us boring carbon copied monkeys?"

"Oh, but don't you see it? Where's the fun in godhead if there's no one to rule? We started reaching out. First, there were several botched attempts to bond with the elements. If you ever wondered why all cultures have a flood in their genesis stories, well, that's the reason."

"Another friend of yours?" Merlin still remembers the overwhelming, luminous interstellar darkness sweeping through Harry, can sense it with his fingertips, and all he can feel now is regret at seeing a magnificent being so diminished.

"No! God, no." Harry gives a watery little laugh, little more than a chuckle. "We were on the opposite sides. Still closer to me than you carbon copied monkeys though, since you've put it so succinctly. Now he's dozing under the ocean, and when he dreams restlessly, the earth shakes. Then we experimented with something that is now mostly in hiding. If you ever wondered why people across cultures have an irrational fear of pale humanoid beings with solid black eyes and sharp teeth-"

"Honestly, I don't want to know."

Harry's hand is slowly inching towards his; it pauses a mere breath away from his fingers, not quite a touch, yet not quite a not-touch either. He chuckles again. "Last time I had to explain all this, it was in Latin, four hundred years ago, give or take a few, to this nice young man from Lemberg. Can you believe it? Balthazar his name was, a scholar of some promise. No one remembers him but me these days. Dashing moustache."

"How did it end?" asks Merlin. Guilt washes over Harry's face like a tide, and Merlin nods. "Nevermind, let me guess. You bonded, and then you had to spoon-feed him chicken broth and wipe his drool till his dying day?"

"No!" Harry yelps indignantly. "Of course not! We had _servants_ for that."

"Read my mind," says Merlin, "there's an ocean of sympathy for your sorry arse."

Harry chooses to ignore his sarcasm, and continues. "Right. Then, there were some rather successful experiments with elephants. Originally, they were the success story, but not anymore, what with the poaching and all. We were mostly suspicious of humans at first. Needy, your lot was. Power, knowledge, the usual fare, but we obliged. Most maritime empires arose because there were several old things at their foundations. But time passed, and many great lines eroded, with gods sliding into madness or lacking volunteers for bonding."

"Little wonder," Merlin orders another pint. If the world around him swirls and wavers and dances a little, he is perfectly content to blame it on alcohol. "Could someone be disposing of the gods? You guys don't sound like such a benevolent presence, from where I'm standing."

"I'd like to see them try," Harry smiles a small and polite smile of someone who has a gun trained squarely on your forehead. "You saw the puppies. Pray you never see me at my prime."

"So, hypothetically," Merlin says slowly and gingerly, "what could one do if one found an unclaimed god, and persuaded it to bond, if one were so inclined?"

Harry pauses, tapping his index finger on his bottom lip. "Depending on which one you've got. But, hypothetically, what couldn't one do? Turn Europe into the new Atlantis, rewrite all maps into a country spanning continents and name it after one’s late grandmother, explode the sun- Of course, there's that minor downside: after a successful bonding, most are in no state to bark out orders, being drooling lumps of flesh. It's mostly the stupid ones that make it. Well, the really curious or the really stupid ones, completely lacking in imagination and perspective, which gives it an extra-horrifying dimension."

"Still not reading my mind?" Merlin asks, and Harry nods.

As punches go, this one is half-hearted at best, but it catches Harry off-guard. He falls, clutching at the bar and toppling his beer as he goes, tumbling to the floor in a rain of shards, cutting his palm on one of them. Merlin plants his foot on his hand and grinds for good measure, drunk on self-pity and violence that drowns out his remorse, if only for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the crowd gather around them.

"Nevermind, totally had it coming, fucked his little sister the other night," Harry raises his bloodied palm in a conciliatory gesture, and smiles his most winsome smile at the somber faces.

"Whatever it is, take it outside, blokes, we want none of that here," yells the surly barman, and they hurry out.

"That was most satisfying. Here, let me see." Merlin grabs him by the chin and turns his face towards the light. Harry's lip is split, and when he smiles, there's blood on his teeth. Sighing, Merlin dabs at his lips with his handkerchief.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this got long, and unwieldy, and it feels like my grammar's all gone with exhaustion. I'm so sorry. The next one's shorter, and, hopefully, better.

When Arthur summons him the next morning, Merlin barely has time to shave. He is still bristling with insomniac restlessness, and compensates for that by moving slower, with careful measured precision. He does not know what this is about, but he can guess: he left a preliminary report in Arthur's mailbox after they got back to the compound in the early hours of the morning, and Arthur would be perfectly justified in asking several pointed questions about the old death left dozing under the city, or about the news of the vanished gods. Or maybe someone noticed the new bandages on Harry's hand, and his split lip. Merlin'd rather not explain that one.

Merlin freezes at the ready on the threshold, but Arthur nods at the Edwardian wing chair in front of his table. It is too low to be altogether comfortable, forcing a guest to tilt his chin and look up at Arthur. Merlin is rather sure that Arthur is aware of the effect.

"At ease, Merlin. You may sit down."

This is never a good sign, Merlin notes. If Arthur plans for a longer conversation, something must be seriously wrong.

As Merlin attempts to make himself comfortable, squinting at the early morning sunlight filtering through the window and trying to sit up as prim and straight as possible to somewhat alleviate the difference in height, Arthur asks him tensely, "So, have you given any thought to the prospect of bonding yet?"

Since I walked into the room on my own two feet and can still hold an intelligent conversation, what's your guess? Merlin wants to ask, but does not, suddenly overcome with the joy of being alive and not wanting to waste the moment at squabbling over the thing that he is not even supposed to know. He takes in the warmth of sunlight on his face, the itchy feel of sweater cuffs around his wrists, and the distant smell of fresh coffee. His shoes pinch a bit, but he's grateful even for that, as opposed to the primal blankness Arthur would push him into.

"No, sir," he smiles, tilting his face towards the light. "We are still at the stage where I bring him quite a lot of chocolates. I'm filing that under 'Miscellaneous expenses.'"

Squinting through the sunlight, Merlin almost misses genuine relief wash over Arthur's face. He's inclined to distrust his eyes at first, but there it is, honest and undeniable; gratitude almost sweeps Merlin off his feet. Maybe he was wrong all along; maybe, to Arthur, he was not expendable after all, but rather a necessary sacrifice. Their trade makes one expect those, and factor them in. He does not trust himself not to say anything stupid, so he turns to the business at hand.

"Sir, I will be filing for authorization later today to convene short reconnaissance trips to the last known locations of the disappeared gods. From what I understand, none of them were bonded, but Harry, Mr. Hart says that they still must have had wardens, so I wanted to check who had sufficient clearance to serve as our cover story."

"Merlin, my boy," Arthur says, leaning forward in his chair, suddenly tired and old; he has never called Merlin his boy before, and now it sounds like a quote, or like a bad joke. "Don't you think that I would have been notified had that happened? There are few enough of us in the know, and few enough gods. A disappearance on that scale couldn’t go unnoticed."

Merlin freezes. “You mean, someone’s already on the case,” he says carefully, and Arthur shakes his head. None of this makes any sense, but then, none of it ever did.

“So, the monsters are alright,” Merlin finally says, not knowing what else to say. Arthur just nods.

"He sounded genuinely dismayed," Merlin says without looking up at Arthur. "I would rather believe it was a mistake than a lie."

"And yet," Arthur says. Earlier, Merlin would have sworn that the man respected Harry's family enough to be well-disposed towards him, if not outright liked Harry, but now all traces of good humour are gone from his voice. All that is left is tight-lipped distaste, devoid even of any trace of disappointment. Merlin almost feels a ping of sympathy towards Harry, yet the less honourable side of him basks unapologetically in being the one selected for this kind of confidences. He might not be Kingsman stock, and Arthur might have chosen him for a complete personality makeover, but at least he never merited this tone of voice.

"I checked, of course, on the off-hand chance that there were some recent developments I was not yet notified of. There's nothing. The gods are firmly in place. I would not pretend to know his reasons, but he is definitely lying."

Something is off in Arthur's voice, something that Merlin cannot quite put his finger on. This much he knows: Arthur is hiding something, the same way that he omitted what lay in store for Merlin after bonding. Merlin looks at him with impersonal curiosity that lies on the wrong side of giving up. His boss is pawning his life, his newly assigned partner is a lying elder god who reads his mind, and Merlin desperately wants to live, yet neither his boss not his newly assigned partner are invested in that particular outcome.

Arthur interprets his silence as distrust. Impatiently tapping his fingers on the table, he asks, "Whom would you rather trust, me or the thing that, for all its undeniable charm, is not even human?"

"Mr. Hart once asked me this exact question," says Merlin, stifling a laugh. The answer, he realizes, is "neither." Harry, no matter what his nature or needs might be, is his to protect, and this forges a deeper bond that he might ever have with Arthur, the man who gave him his present life and was as close to a father figure as he ever got. And, unfair as this might be, Merlin's opinion of Arthur will never be uncoloured by the deep resentment he feels at craving his acceptance and approval. He cannot not crave them, and he cannot not resent Arthur for his own shortcomings either.

Realizing that Arthur is still expecting an answer, Merlin nods curtly. "I don't find it prudent to inform him that- I think I should cultivate his trust. Give us an assignment, so that we would have something else to do for the next couple of days at least. Please."

Arthur winces. "I will see what I can do."

Which is how they end up on a plane to Barcelona. As missions go, this is barely Kingsman jurisdiction, strictly local, too straight-forward, lacking even a certain redeeming madness which occasionally makes Arthur assign them stints that would have otherwise stayed within the arms of local law enforcement agencies. The case was clear-cut enough that Centro de Información de la Defensa could have dealt with the problem on their own just as easily, and their unwillingness to do so could mean only one thing: they were fearing a mole high up enough in the ranks to jeopardize the operation. This concern adds a certain element of surprise to the mission, but not enough to keep it interesting. 

Setting the files aside, Merlin stretches his legs out and looks up. This is a mistake, he realizes, for his eyes are drawn, time and time again, to Harry's bottom lip, split and puffy. Harry absent-mindedly keeps worrying at it with his tongue. Merlin expects to feel guilt for his outburst, since he is not usually a violent man, or at least discomfort at the reminder about Harry violating his trust, but instead all he feels, he realizes with dull astonishment, is hungry possessive pride. He left a mark on him, claiming Harry for his own. Harry is not fully human, but he inhabits a body that can be touched or crushed, and that just might be enough. Merlin wants to reach out, into his space, press his fingers to the healing wound on his lip, make it better, make it worse. Merlin disentangles the thought and distantly marvels at it as a new data point about himself, to be locked away safely and never indulged in or shared. All it means for now, he concludes, is this: Harry, right along with Arthur, if for completely different reasons, is firmly off the list of people Merlin could trust his judgment about.

Harry bristles when he catches Merlin staring. "What?"

"Want to go over the mission details?" Merlin asks, his voice raspy with a lump of excitement, and fear, and something wild and drunk that he does not have a name for, stuck in his throat.

"No," Harry, who had to be practically dragged into the jet, is settling into a sulk. "You know what we should be doing. I know what we should be doing. And yet, we are sent on this useless gig anybody could have taken, because fuck the crisis of the century, better save some useless royalty or other-"

"Maybe they have some gods too," Merlin tries to placate him. "You could establish contacts-"

Harry shakes his head. "They have not bonded in centuries, none of them, so now they are too far gone, might as well be in a different dimension altogether. Reaching out is an acquired taste, and we lose it easily."

"Right, saving royalty it is then," Merlin shrugs and lays out the files in front of Harry, who averts his gaze and stares studiously into the window instead.

They infiltrate the Museum of Catalonian Art on perfect, if perfectly fake, invitations, Merlin as a representative of a distant branch of the royal family, and Harry as the sole heir to a clan of antiques collectors. They enter separately, and don't look at each other except through mirrors. Merlin tries to keep close to the king's retinue on the off-hand chance that their assassin might be in the group, while Harry scans the outer perimeter of the room. Their files said that the assassin from one of the Catalan militant Marxist groups would be working alone, but trusting the numbers is, in Merlin's experience, one sure-fire way to leaving the site on a stretcher.

"Seen anything?" he asks out of the corner of his mouth, as the crowd currents wash him and Harry together.

"A lot of questionable fashion choices, but nothing fishy, not yet," Harry whispers, and then, with no warning whatsoever, steps to the side, his shadows springing up around him like a shield. One darker tendril brushes against Merlin's wrist, sending a shiver down his spine. Harry freezes, his arms crossed over his chest, as he watches a middle-aged man with a greying moustache pass them in the crowd. After he is safely gone, Harry relaxes again.

"You guys are good at filtering out that which should not be here, like elder gods," he says with a sigh.

"Someone you know?" Merlin asks, his nerves suddenly on edge.

"The Grand Master of the Knights Templar, or one of them, anyway, the ones that we crossed paths with earlier. The amount of sociopaths in the upper ranks- probably all the inbreeding."

"Seems like his general area of expertise, this being an exhibition of representations of the Grail through the ages," Merlin shrugs.

"The question is, why is he even here, after we established that his organization engages in recreational blood-letting of the nonconsensual kind?" Harry's turning every which way, fast ruining his cover of an air-headed socialite. Merlin hopes that nobody's paying them too much attention.

"Unlike his underlings, he might be high up enough to be untouchable without unpleasant repercussions,” he tries to explain reasonably. “Or, we might be collating more data and establishing their chains of supply. We'll never know, after you helpfully blew your cover. In any case, it is unlikely that he is our mark."

After the guests proceed from the hall to the gallery, the mission becomes a logistical nightmare. The first hall, featuring six different chalices from the royal collection, all with claims to being the Grail, is easy enough, but after that, the gallery turns into a maze. Many of the exhibits are taken from churches, and the curators have painstakingly recreated the interiors, setting up small apses and arches that turn the space into a warren of barely lit nooks. Merlin strides along the concave surfaces, followed by the dark dead eyes of the saints being eaten away by the scabies of chipped paint and time. Some frescoes are so faded that they look like frosted-over windows, with hovering figures barely visible behind hoarfrost crystals, here a palm stretched out in blessing, there more empty eyes. Merlin barges on, hoping that their assassin, whoever he or she might be, would try to beat the crowd too. Eventually, they settle for a procedure, moving slightly ahead of the king's retinue: Merlin scouts out the points that allow a direct line of fire on the king's party, while Harry strays even further ahead, maintaining the line of fire on those positions, should Merlin alert him to anything untoward.

This far ahead, the crowd thins out quite a bit, both making their task easier and making them conspicuous. Merlin feels vulnerable, almost naked. Taking a step back, ostensibly to better admire a fresco from a distance, he scans the group around him. After a moment's hesitation, he discards a middle-aged lady in a gown barely this side of inappropriately risqué: her purse is too small for a gun, and secreting anything under her dress would be a significant enough accomplishment to invite her to offer weapon concealment workshops at Kingsman; also, she does seem genuinely interested in the fresco. Next to her is an older man in a tailcoat that could hide a perfectly respectable arsenal, but, as Merlin passes him, he can smell alcohol even at three steps' distance. If this is indeed their man, he'd be lucky to hit a wall, nevermind the king surrounded by a whole host of bodyguards. That leaves Merlin with a teenage girl, still with traces of baby fat around her heart-shaped face, and a man in his thirties with a penguin ornament bow-tie. Please, let it not be the teenager, he prays.

Casually, he takes several steps to the side, and tilts his head to better admire the fresco.

"The lighting's shit," he says without looking at the man, seemingly captivated by the image of a chalice swarming with insectoid little figures of angels. "And I've never seen this interpretation."

"Not very interested in the subject, are you?" the man chuckles. "That's von Eschenbach. The Grail as the sanctuary of the angels that joined neither side during Lucifer's rebellion."

Merlin leans forward; the crowded angels look sickly, and he can almost hear the chitin rustling of their wings. The man turns to him and stretches out his hand.

"Enrique Ruiz. Nice to meet you."

His thumb brushes the inside of Merlin's wrist a little too intently. Great, both a connoisseur of fine art and interested in a casual hookup; if anything takes him off the list of suspects, it is this combination. Murmuring something about his fiancée being interested in Medieval art, Merlin sizes up the girl. There's a plastic, cheep-looking heart pendant hanging off her bulky purse. Merlin briefly considers asking Harry to do the job if she is indeed their mark, Harry the inhuman presence for whom sympathy and pity mean little, but, out of a weird sense of protectiveness, he moves to block Harry's line of fire. Harry might not have the human compunction about killing children, but Merlin'd rather Harry didn't sully himself with this mess. He can do it, he can walk away from it, and he can live on with it, or so he tells himself, clutching a gun loaded with poison darts, his own invention.

The girl is moving to the next space, moving out of the range, and Merlin lets out a heavy sigh. He lingers a little, allowing himself a moment of peace and quiet, when Enrique steps into his space, and a moment later he feels a gun poking at his ribcage. Relieved, Merlin relaxes visibly. He briefly wonders what Harry's doing, before he realizes that Harry probably cannot see what is happening, not at this angle.

"If you stay quiet and don't try to stop me, you live," says the man whose name probably is not Enrique.

"Sounds great," he says, turning minutely, and shoots at him through the fabric of his jacket.

What his darts gun lacks in muzzle velocity, it makes up for in sparing one the trouble of aiming cautiously. Merlin was a little worried that the dart, slowed down by fabric, would not have enough impetus to pierce the skin, but his doubts turn out to be unfounded. The assassin does not even notice anything at first, pressing his own gun harsher to Merlin's ribs at his movement, but then a brief sting in his hand makes him look down. There's barely enough time for surprise to wash over his face before sooty greyness starts spreading under his skin, and he crumbles to the floor in quiet convulsions. Merlin decides that waiting around with a cooling corpse for company is not the best of ideas, and quickly punches in the employees' access code, helpfully provided by Centro de Información de la Defensa, to a side exit.

Once he is in a cool, dimly lit corridor, he finally relaxes. "Got him. Blend in, wait around until the police start releasing witnesses, make sure there was no backup. See you at the jet," he murmurs into his mic, and saunters on.

His memory for plans and maps is trained into vicious tenacity, and it does not take him long to realize that something's off. He never trusted the data packages from local intelligence agencies without double-checking them with the original plans, but he was too worried this time, and too tired; he swears under his breath when the corridor turns left rather than right for the second time, and then opens into an unexpected storage space cluttered with shipping crates. For now, this is little more than a hiccup, but the delay pushes him towards the edge again. Right as he tries to connect to the HQ and ask the tech on call to look up the maps for him, he hears footsteps.

Centro de Información de la Defensa promised to make their exit as smooth as possible without raising suspicions, and wipe the footage containing their faces; Merlin just does not think that the museum personnel were informed of the plan. He'd rather not fight an irate exhibition curator who mistook him for an incompetent art thief, and so he ducks behind the row of crates, peeking out through a narrow gap between the planking and the wall.

The men are not Centro, unless Centro switched to mismatched secondhand cammo since he last checked, and not curators either, unless curators walk around in groups of ten and carry M16s when they are really pissed.

"Scratch blending in, I need backup," Merlin whispers softly into his mic, and tries to gauge what would be the best vantage point.

He expected the group to proceed towards the gallery, but instead, they pause in a passage not far from him and rapidly sign at each other, planning how to best spread around the room. Trust his luck to choose the route set aside for evacuating the king in case of emergencies, Merlin thinks, rolling his eyes a little bit.

And then he no longer has time to think, because the door that he just passed creaks open again, and the familiar voice asks, "Do any of you gents care for a dance?"

Merlin jumps up a bit and clambers atop one of the crates, pulling out his Glock. The darts gun might have the benefit of being silent, but the present situation calls for serious measures.

Harry interprets Merlin's first shot, which hits the corpulent man whom Merlin assumed to be the leader of the group, as his cue. Past that point, Merlin gets no openings to shoot whatsoever. His breath held in mixed horror and wonder, he cannot take his eyes off the whirlwind below. Harry walks up to the group, his shadows unspooling in soggy coils with each light step; they gain weight and substance, and for a breathless moment it seems like Harry is made of shimmering air and little else, with only trailing darkness holding him to the ground.

The first kill happens so fast that Merlin barely registers it. It has absolutely nothing in common with the weirdly distant, almost merciful death of the guard in Pallazzo Te; this is frenzied, calculated for visual effect, and in that, almost human. Shadow tendrils whip up around Harry, and as they lash across the chest of the first man to raise his M16, the fabric of his uniform, and then his skin start melting, rotting, dripping to the ground in rivulets of bloody slime; he claws at the gaping wound, his fingers getting stuck in his ribcage before they start melting too. 

"Cat got your tongue?" Harry smiles, and at that, the tongues of the men snake out past their lips, forcibly unclenching their jaws, bluish, parched with horror, obscene, lolling with a will of their own. As the first one breaks free of its nest in the throat with a splattering of blood, Harry nods with satisfaction, and the shadows pick up their reaping again.

As one of the men raises his arm to protect his face, Merlin notices the tattoo: a sign seems strangely familiar. That finally breaks him out of his reverie. "Harry, stop!"

Harry whips around, splitting the last man open from clavicle to navel almost absent-mindedly.

"Stop, we need someone to interrogate," Merlin says, already knowing that it is too late. He scoots over and jumps off the crate, his shoes sliding a little over the squelching biomatter that was living human beings not ten seconds ago.

"Don't touch me!" Harry yelps, turning towards him, his voice brimming with panic. Merlin freezes, blood soaking his shoes. "I thought you were in danger. I didn't see you, I thought-" Harry trails off, blushing a little. As his shoulders sag, Merlin has to fight the urge to pull him closer and cover his eyes.

Well, fuck, Merlin thinks; if even this display of inhuman rage drives him over into his best mother hen mode, he is in deep shit.

Harry meanwhile scratches at his ear, unclipping his earpiece. "Arthur," he mouthed, "You deal with him."

Merlin starts to shake his head, but Harry's already throwing the damn thing, and Merlin catches it on reflex. 

"Hart?" Arthur barks as Merlin presses it to his ear. "Hart, do you hear me?"

"This is Merlin, sir," he says, pointedly rolling his eyes at Harry.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"There was an unpredictable complication, sir," says Merlin, trying intently not to look down. It feels like he's standing ankle-deep in bloody mush. "It's been handled efficiently. We believe that there are no more threats."

"You call that ‘efficiently’? I already got a call from our Spanish colleagues, and they are not amused," Arthur growls.

Harry finally covers the distance separating them; his cold fingers cover Merlin's palm as he pulls the earpiece closer. "You asked what happened, sir? Well, I did. They threatened a certain Scot of our acquaintance. Being an upstanding citizen and a loyal Kingsman by proxy that I am, I interfered. This is us developing rapport on assignment, sir. Right like you said, sir."

Merlin does not need to see Arthur's sour impression to imagine it, and he is really glad that he has several hours' flight to steel himself before meeting his boss in person.

"Merlin, and you did nothing to stop him?" Arthur says after a pause.

"With all due respect, sir, there's little that he could have done," Harry's smile is wild, elated. "You know, what with him being a mortal, and me being an eldritch horror."

"Thanks for undermining my competence," Merlin snipes after Arthur signs off. Grudge or no grudge, the Centro does offer them a lift back to their jet, which Merlin is grateful for. That leaves him with less time to not think about this whole mess before he settles comfortably on the plane and starts writing a report that contains only the safe, quantifiable data that he is comfortable with.

Once on the plane, Harry plops down on the seat facing his, and this is a problem, as far as writing his report is concerned.

"I'm not letting you go," says Harry, propping his feet up on both sides of Merlin's seat. There's a speck of blood on his ear, Merlin notices, and another one on his neck. He leans forward to wipe them off.

"I'm not going anywhere. Anywhere, at the moment, means six miles down."

Harry swallows and says without looking at him, "If you do decide to go through with it, I am somewhat certain that you could make it through bonding. The choice is yours."

Trust Harry to ruin perfectly good awkward conversations with reminders about his sad prospects, Merlin thinks, and asks without too much ire, "And what leads you to that generous estimate?"

"Oh, watching you," the monster says calmly, "What did you do when you first saw the tendrils?"

Merlin could really, really do without a reminder about the blush spreading over Harry's cheekbones, about a moan escaping his lips. He covers his face with his palms. "Do you need to rub that in? I apologized."

Harry chuckles. "No, actually, that's not what I meant. What did you feel?"

"Anger," Merlin answers, reaching for those safe times when Harry was only ever monster to him, and monster meant something so distant and alien that he had little interest in it. "Then, curiosity."

"And then?"

Merlin shrugs his shoulders. "Exhilaration. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Pity- I'm sorry, I know this is unwarranted, but you felt so very lonely."

Harry nods contentedly. "Point is, you did not run away screaming, and you did not flinch back. You reached out, and embraced it, and kept reaching out when you needed reassurance, which is kind of messed up, reaching out for the most ineffable thing around for comfort."

"Is that uncommon?" Merlin asks, blushing as Harry points out the early signs that he himself had missed at the time. He is angry at himself, for clutching at the first available thing in his loneliness, and at Harry, for trailing all over his mind and life.

"It is not a typical reaction, no," Harry says. "If anyone can soldier through bonding, it's probably you, but the risk is always there. And I don't want to lose you."

"And that's what you tell every last one of them, down through the centuries," Merlin says, gone far past anger and past fighting.

"Wouldn't tell you if I did, would I?" Harry snaps, but then a brightly stockinged foot starts rubbing at Merlin's thigh. Had it been any man sitting in front of him, Merlin would have been made uncomfortable, but this is his monster, his Harry, the ancient void playing make-believe, its ideas of human companionship probably conditioned by way too much daytime soap operas, and Merlin lets himself relax into the touch and keep this moment, much like he keeps his emergency stash of overpriced chocolates. 

“I’m not doing it,” he says, catching one foot between his palms, “you’d better find somebody else”. 

With a giggle, the monster pulls away. Immortal immoral horror or not, Harry is horribly ticklish.


	7. Chapter 7

In his dreams, Merlin is clawing at his melting ribcage, his fingernails scratching against bared ribs. There are also glimpses seen through Harry's eyes, Harry fighting with glee and abandon, his steps light, and he's no longer wasting any effort on trying to reign himself in. He spreads out his wings, and he is a sight to behold, except that there are symbols on the floor surrounding him, and when his shadow touches one of them, the dream fades into a burst of pain, and then, nothing. Merlin splashes cold water at his face. 

By the time he returns to his bed in pre-dawn chill, sleep is all gone, but that is what nights are for, so he settles under the duvet with his arms crossed over his chest, and stares at the ceiling until his alarm clock rings some three hours later. Old things are prowling through his thoughts, lashing at the inside of his skull, and he relaxes to accommodate them, a passive spectator to his life.

By nature and by training, he is not predisposed to dramatic reactions, and tends to take whatever life brings him in stride. He wouldn't say that a sudden revelation of a hidden dimension to reality did not anger him, because that would be a lie; he is too invested in knowing and obeying the rules to acquiesce in the knowledge that there were whole levels denied to him. Merlin would not, however, hold that against Harry, whose choices, such as they were, were writ in stone long before everything that Merlin knew came about, and what a grand choice that was, having to settle on either being forever stuck on earth like a foreign body, a splinter in the festering wound of a reality alien to him, or reaching out hungrily and devouring anything that dared to reach back. Merlin could maybe hold that against Arthur and the others in the know, reserving some fundamental facts from the hoi polloi, but not against Harry, whom he could either refuse, or stay by his side. For what it was worth, staying by his side is what Merlin chose, even if he would not do that at the price of his own life. There was a dimension to the choice of which he could have been ashamed, had he been prone to being ashamed of himself: having settled for life in an organization where he would never quite fit and which he could never quite leave, partly because of its exit protocols being nonexistent, and partly out of predisposition, Merlin reveled in the proximity of someone who was even more of an outsider. By deciding to protect Harry, for that was as much his choice as the part of the assignment, Merlin became, in his own eyes if not in the eyes of anybody else he knew, someone who had enough power to shelter others, rather than a newly-minted handler, there only on Arthur's mercy. With Harry in the picture, Merlin seemed so much more average, and even his choice to join the organization operating outside the boundaries of law and conventional justice mellowed as the backdrop to a being that killed because it could, and practiced compassion only when it suited its needs.

There was also the matter of attraction, which he became aware of only recently and hesitantly, and which startled him with its intensity. That was not something that he knew about himself either, but then, he'd loved Kathleen and lived in her shadow for most of his adult life, and Kathleen had been more than enough. In any case, that need not concern him for now, he decides with a sigh, and gets up to brew a new pot of coffee, so that Harry would not have to wait for his mug when he saunters into the office.

The coffee grows cold. Merlin goes through the incoming news, flagging the items that might interest Kingsman and setting aside some more outlandish cases to share with Harry. He does not start worrying in earnest before noon, and he does not reach out to Arthur until after 4 PM.

"He usually comes to my office first thing in the morning," Merlin reports. "I checked his room, and he is not there. He is not at the gym either. I was wondering if maybe it was a matter of a family emergency that you might be aware of."

He quenches all thoughts of Harry saying, with utter conviction, that the gods are all gone. Arthur said that that was a lie, but now Harry's gone too, and Merlin does not know what to do.

Arthur gestures towards an armchair. "A family emergency- you could call it that, maybe. A more suitable companion was found for him," Arthur says after a pause, and there's no judgment in his voice, just plain acknowledgment. Whatever else Merlin was, suitable was not one of those qualities. "Didn't he tell you?"

"Not a word," Merlin says after the pause becomes uncomfortable. "He left without a word. Wished me goodnight after we got back, and did not show up today. I had the right to be concerned," he says, without much conviction.

Arthur shakes his head, and says with unexpected softness, "I might have been wrong in handing this to you. I should have seen that you would find it hard, and if you can forgive me, I would say that I'm sorry. I should have stressed that he is not human, and treating him as one is not the way to go."

"There's nothing to apologize for," Merlin murmurs, dismayed. He doesn't know how much Arthur can read from his face, but there's probably more than he would be comfortable with.

Arthur signs him a furlough slip. "Take a couple of days off. Go to London, have some fun. On Thursday I'll send Morgana over with the files for your next case."

"There's no need-" Merlin starts, but Arthur presses the slip into his palm.

"Take it. I’m not saying that you need it, but back in my days, young men would kill for one of these slips, and I wish that was an exaggeration.”

Merlin is not quite sure how he got back to his office; next time he comes to, he is wiping the house rules off the blackboard, all the "When on mission, thou shalt obey me implicitly," and "Thou shalt provide me with milk chocolates in sufficient quantity," and "No mind-reading unless explicitly permitted." Then, he methodically goes through the office and dumps all the milk chocolates into the trash bin, both the official stash and the half-eaten bars that Harry kept hoarding in all the nooks and crannies.

After that, he slouches down in his chair, and lets himself feel absolutely, utterly lost.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A busy week, so another update on the shorter side of things, complete with unavoidable emo!exposition. However, BAMFery coming up next chapter!
> 
> Meanwhile, dunkelgrau, an unbelievably brilliant & amazing soul, drew a portrait of the TentacledElderGod!Harry, for all your tentacle!Harry needs. You don't necessarily realize it yet, but your life is kind of dark and empty without this amazing art, so go and admire dunkelgrau at her tumblr: http://erebusodora.tumblr.com/post/115935924646/so-today-ive-read-a-fiction-story-and

You should always trust monsters, Harry said, for monsters stand the most to lose. Looking for excuses and fully aware of what he is doing, Merlin petulantly goes over their entire history: Harry refused any possibility of companionship by preemptively intruding onto his mind and rifling there for spoils; Harry prioritized murderous abominations over their human victims; last not least, Harry himself is a murderous abomination. Merlin's protectiveness of him is misdirected at best, delusional at worst.

Delusional or not, Merlin is too good a handler not to notice certain patterns, even if there are reasons not to look at them too closely. To spare himself some time on second-guessing, he quickly sketches down the sign that he saw on the arm of the man in the museum, the same sign that seared through Harry's shadows in his dream last night. It is not quite treason, he thinks guiltily, imagining Arthur's disapproving look; following up on your missions and reviewing the details is par for the course. Merlin casts a quick glance at the clock over his row of monitors: it's another twenty minutes before shifts change at the archives. Trust basic human indolence and incompetence to alleviate the repressive effects of any system; Merlin sighs, for the first time in his life grateful for the fact.

Once he is fairly certain that Josh, late or not, is safely installed at his workplace, Merlin heads for the archives at a brisk pace that soon turns into a run, completely against his will. He pauses in front of the door for a moment, waiting for his breathing to even out, and then walks in with an expression of absent-minded benevolence.

"Forgot to file the application for reimbursements," he says, waving around a copy of a report from last year. "Mind if I quickly stick it in the binder?"

Josh salutes him with a half-eaten sandwich and gestures in the direction of the stacks without bothering to unglue his eyes from the latest _Doctor Who_ episode on one of the CCTV monitors, now successfully rerouted to BBC. 

There's a surge of relief as Merlin finds the binder for their Mantova assignment: it takes him no time at all, the documents are right where he expected them to be. Maybe it was all pointless paranoia, a known occupational hazard of their trade, he thinks through a weak pang of guilt, but as he opens the binder, there's nothing but his original tapes and his preliminary report. Whatever their findings, nobody followed up on them; it would seem like nobody even bothered to get back to Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza either, which is strange, seeing how it was the Italian intelligence agency that got them an in, and that they exited leaving a dead body in their trail. Nobody bothered to transcribe and translate the Latin parts of the recording, Merlin huffs, stuffing the tape under his shirt.

After he gets back to his office, he rewinds the tape, biting his lip in his impatience to get to the point. Harry walks around the hall at Pallazo Te, turning his head to give Merlin visuals on the manacles, the protective sheets on the mosaic-covered floors, and there they are, right there. Merlin stops the video. The image is dark and slightly blurred with movement, but one thing is undeniable: the twisting ornaments on the floor contain, over and over, the same symbol that he sketched down earlier. Merlin rocks back in his chair and closes his eyes.

He should have immediately noticed that there was something off about the way in which they were sent on an assignment on which no rookie, even a non-human one, belonged. At the time, however, he was too jealous of Arthur's attention, and took it for granted that Arthur would cut some corners for a young man from a good family, in a way that he would not for Merlin, despite his skills, experience and utter devotion to both the man and the organization.

He did have his suspicions about the mission in Barcelona. It was not traditional Kingsman fare, and even had it been that, it was not the kind of operation a rookie and a handler with no field clearance should be on. But Merlin was too wrapped up in his feelings for Harry, betrayal and need and resentment for being scraped out of his shell like an oyster, raw and vulnerable, to take a step back. They were shepherded through the museum like sheep, first by the assassin's movements, then by the wrong maps they were handed. Sure, maybe the men they stumbled across were indeed trying to ambush the king, but Merlin is willing to bet a year's supply of chocolates that the team was waiting for them. And when that failed, Arthur found another way to hand Harry over to them. Merlin expects to resent Arthur for the clinical precision with which the man had played him, but instead, he is impressed with his efficiency all over. Of course he knew that Merlin would trust him if he called him unsuitable, and of course he knew that Merlin would lap up any small sign of kindness.

Even knowing full well that he won't ever be promoted to knighthood, Merlin designed the tests that he himself would be likely to fail. The dog test, however, was not one of his inventions, for it was there since the very beginning. Operating at a higher level of justice that was not necessarily fair, Kingsman required absolute deference to authority and a willingness to relegate one's moral choices to those who, having seen the larger picture, kept an eye on the greater good. Merlin would pass the dog test with flying colours, or so he always thought. He always took such comfort in rules, sheltering him from the thin ice of doubt. But then, he never had to take the damn thing, did he? 

When Merlin reaches for a cold cup of tea, his hands shake. He takes a slow sip through a lump in his throat. Harry would have been amused if he found out that Merlin upgraded him from his monster to his puppy, not that he would ever get a chance to learn that. He wonders distantly how long it would take for the hurt to fade, and for him to grow content with the new self-knowledge. For a while, he believed that he was a man capable of protecting a mad being, old and scary and beautiful, from itself, if need be. But then, he always treasured stability more than anything, didn't he? It figures that, having cast a glance over the edge, he would not throw away his job and, quite possibly, his life, for a trifle like that. 

The dream from last night is like a cold shard of glass under his tongue, and when he chokes on tea and bends over with the coughs, he can almost taste blood. He should stop calling it a dream, he thinks. That was Harry, reaching out for help in the only way he knew to the only person he trusted. And Merlin failed him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dunkelgrau, our benevolent and extremely brilliant overlord, did an amazing portrait of BAMF!Merlin. Gorgeous eye-candy this way: http://erebusodora.tumblr.com/post/116149277786/a-companion-piece-for-this-one-because-the-voices 
> 
> Don't mind me, I'm just licking my screen.
> 
>  
> 
> [Um, also, I'm afraid there's a correlation between chapter length and my grasp of grammar, and this got long. I apologize in advance for whatever unintentional monstrosities might lurk there. Intentional monstrosities, however, are all mine.]

A quick glance at the clock confirms that sixteen hours passed since the moment when he washed up on the muddy shallows of sleep, woken by the searing pain in the shadow limbs that were not his. Whatever their plans for Harry might have been, it is probably all over by now. Unless they make a habit of starting their rituals around midnight, as they did with the ceremony that Merlin and Harry witnessed in Mantova; that would give Merlin another five restless hours.

Merlin hopes that he would have felt something if they destroyed Harry, reality fading minutely, flattening like a cardboard box; if he did not, that must mean that Harry lives, he tells himself without much conviction, not prone to esoteric beliefs despite his recent experiences. Truth is, he will probably never know either way.

Grasping at straws, Merlin pulls up Harry's file, making a note to apologize to him for this breach of confidence should it all, despite all indications, turn out to be unfounded paranoia, and dials the number listed as Harry’s next of kin's contact. The receiver is picked up almost at once. Wiping his sweaty palm on his trousers, Merlin introduces himself with Arthur's real name, and asks if Harry has reached the house safely.

"Not yet," says the woman who picked up, in a strong Yorkshire accent. Probably not family, Merlin thinks; Harry was not kidding when he mentioned butlers and ponies. "He didn't even tell us he was coming- boys these days, eh. I'd better prepare his room then. Thank you for taking such good care of him."

There's genuine warmth in her voice, and Merlin feels a pang of guilt for stealing this snatch of Harry's life that was not meant for him, as well as for his immediate assumption that he was the only one who cared. Somewhere, there's a family that was handed a monster for a child, and raised it as their own. He should be thinking about them; or about Harry, dark shadows trailing after a human form, an unfortunate sense of humour and a nonexistent sense of propriety; or about Arthur, who always made the best choices, even if they were not necessarily good, just marginally better than the alternative. Instead, all Merlin can think about is himself, and about what his choices make him. He gets up and rifles through his box of IDs, all Kingsman issue and thus unsuitable under the circumstances. At the very bottom of the box, under a fake lid, there's his old passport with a name he no longer thinks of as his, and he quickly pockets it. Not that it would not get flagged either, but at least he would not be betraying the organization that gave him everything while using their own resources. He kicks at the go-to bag under his table - spare underwear and socks, granola bars and a combat medical kit - but the contents of the bag imply that he would make it through the night, which seems presumptuous. He empties the duffel bag out on his desk, and stuffs it with all weaponry he can get his hands on without paying a visit to the arsenal, which is not much: several Kingsman pistols and an interesting assortment of prototypes he was tinkering with in his spare time.

Once the choice is made, he feels giddy and light-headed, his training taking over rational thinking. He does not have much time: eventually, the Harts will call Arthur back, and then his IDs will immediately get blocked. He races for the hangars, skidding at the corners, and hopes that nobody would stop him to ask what's the rush. He swipes his card at the door to the hangars, trying to breathe slowly, and counts to ten. The panel just beeps, and then flashes "Slide your card again" at him. Right, he thinks. He might still be able to get out through the back door, which Kay often leaves propped open when he sneaks out for a cigarette, and then climb over the wall in that one spot where an old oak tree was left standing too close to it out of sheer sentimentality, a route preferred by recruits who wanted to get a beer after curfew. Then what? He'll never get anywhere on time if he's limited to public transportation. Frustrated at his failure even in treason, he swipes the card again, and this time, the doors do swing open. He rushes forward.

Back in the day, he started out as a liaison between several regional Kingsman divisions before being promoted to his current role as a handler, so the ground crews know him. His sudden appearance doesn't raise any eyebrows around these parts. Looking more confident than he feels, he heads towards his favourite jet.

He has four hours left, and he does not even dare to think about his itinerary until he's safely up in the air, gaining altitude with each passing second. Palazzo Te as the meeting place is probably burned for good, so he has to hope that there was a reason why they were lured out to Barcelona in the first place. He clings to the arbitrary cut-off time that he set for himself, because one has to cling to something, and the moment of calm afforded by purely mechanical motions of piloting the jet gives him time to think the situation over. All the other deities, Harry said, were unbonded; something twists in Merlin’s chest when he remembers his joy at noticing Arthur’s relief the moment the man heard that they had not bonded yet. Was not Merlin Arthur worried about, he realizes belatedly. For whatever reason, he probably needed Harry without a human by his side. 

With a distant sense of surprise, he realizes that the fact itself – an organization gathering up spare omnipotent beings all over Europe – does not bother him all that much. He knows Arthur, his respect for the man magnified by his craving for Arthur’s approval. Merlin is fairly certain that, as hidden overlords go, Arthur would do a decent job, and probably has reasons to believe that this is the best possible outcome. Merlin is not even sure if it would be that bad of an outcome for Harry or his kind: sure, Harry did not seem to agree to the plan initially, but he would get his human bond and his power out of it.

Merlin’s actions over the last couple of hours would probably suffice to get him sent home with his mind wiped, or worse, so he is past the point of any last-moment doubts, but he is still not sure where the situation leaves him. He is Kingsman, first and foremost. Even his name was given by the organization: the name he is proud of, and would not want to relinquish. However, the Kingsman identity was always an ill-fitting suit, slightly too big for him to fill, and he did his best to grow into it. But now, all of a sudden, it seems too small in all the wrong places, not quite suffocating, but pinching and hampering his movements. He does not know what else he could be, and, honestly, he is not eager to search for alternatives, but he’d rather not spend his life staggering around blind, played for a fool, expected to give up his loyalties at a moment’s notice. If anything, Merlin _is_ his loyalties, the people whose safety he was entrusted, his small day-to-day rituals. What he’s doing now might be suicide, but so was the alternative, a less flashy emptying out of the vessels that he thought of as himself, not that different from the alien otherness of the bond washing over fragile human personalities.

Vessels, he thinks with a sudden laugh. That’s what the deal with grails is, he realizes. The assassin at the museum said that the Grail sheltered the angels who took neither side during Lucifer’s uprising, so that’s what they must believe Harry and his kind are. Some angel Harry would make, he thinks, and starts laughing, and cannot stop until his throat is hoarse, and there are tears in his eyes. 

He lands at a small private aerodrome owned by military subcontractors that Kingsman did some work with in Afghanistan; Merlin has favours to call in, and they don’t mind his presence. They might, once they realize that this is not official Kingsman business, but for now, he just nods to a vaguely familiar aerodrome controller.

“Just a quick pick-up,” Merlin says, saluting the man. “Will be back with a friend and off by 400. May I borrow a car from your fleet, in memory of the good old days?”

His gaze falls on the big electric clock on the man’s desk. "Your clock's wrong," he says, absent-mindedly signing the forms.

"Different time zone, pal," the man says, signing him in. “Also, you do remember that we drive on the right here, right?”

That leaves him with two hours, he thinks, slamming his foot down on the accelerator of an inconspicuous yet highly modified SEAT. The man’d better be home. Merlin heads for the flat of the inspector from Centro who supervised the Spanish end of the museum mission.

He runs up the stairs taking two steps at a time, and rings without taking his finger off the button until the man opens the door.

There are voices coming from the flat, and Merlin tenses minutely. He does not want to deal with the family. Not that he wouldn’t, but he’d rather not, if he does not have to.

“Inspector Acosta?” he asks, stepping into the flat to make sure that the man would not slam the door in his face. “Apologies for such a late visit. I hope I did not wake your family.”

The man makes a nondescript gesture. “There’s no family, just me and the TV.”

Kingsman is not the only job that is not conducive to stable relationships, thinks Merlin with a pang of sympathy for the man. He would not even be in this mess had Kingsman offered more days off for him to take Kathleen someplace nice, but then, he loved his job more than anything anyways, at least until these days. He gives the inspector a weak smile. 

“I know, these jobs- speaking of, we just realized that we have to check something out. Could I inconvenience you for the local address of the Grand Master of the Knights Templar?” He is inordinately proud of himself for making it through the phrase without a hysterical chuckle. “The one who was at the museum, I mean.”

It is hard to tell if the man’s hesitation means that he is searching for words in his imperfect English, or if he’s lying. He’s lying, Merlin decides. He does not have a backup plan, or at least not a one he can pull off in the remaining hour and change.

"Oh come on,” he smiles, trying to seem non-threatening. “We got that from Italians, they are not exactly known for keeping it quiet, so I would be extremely surprised if you didn’t know. And it’s an ongoing investigation, see. We can let you make the arrest, how about that?"

“Do come in,” the man finally nods, pointing deeper into his flat. Merlin follows the direction of his gesture, and his gaze falls on the clock on the wall. He is so, so fucked. There’s a whisper of movement behind him, and he starts turning back on instinct. He is not fast enough, but even that minute change in his position suffices to make the butt of the man's gun slide off his skull rather than hit dead center. Still hurts like hell, but at least he's not crumpled unconscious to the floor, so he's inclined to count his blessings. While inspector Acosta tries to aim at him, he efficiently kicks at the man’s shins.

“That’s an extremely stupid trick to pull if you are not absolutely certain that you can knock your opponent out,” Merlin says in a tone that, he hopes, conveys amiable menace, crouching over the back of the inspector, who’s now huffing with his face pressed into cheap linoleum. “Because, see, recreational violence is unlikely to ingratiate you to him, and then you are stuck with someone who is very, very pissed.”

Merlin makes sure that plastic handcuffs over inspector’s wrists are well-fitted, and pats the man on the back. Something tickles down his forehead, and as Merlin wipes at it with the back of his palm, he realizes that it's blood. He must be a damn sight.

“Well, now that we are done joking around, you’d better start talking,” Merlin says, and, slicing through inspector’s belt, pulls down his trousers and pants in one smooth yank. The man thrashes under him like a fish, and Merlin knocks his head on the floor, not hard enough to really hurt, but hard enough to make a point.

“You give me the address,” he drawls, “and you walk off with your balls intact. You insist on playing the hero, and you can start carrying them around as a pendant. Don’t worry, I’ll cauterize the wound, so you will actually get to live with the consequences.”

He flicks a pocket knife in front of the inspector’s face for good measure, and the man starts thrashing again, which might be fine: most of the torture techniques Merlin knows are psychological anyway, so it pays to leave some time for the horror to sink in. But the clock is ticking in the background, drowning out the roaring of blood in his ears.

“I’d tell you anything if only I knew, you bastard.” The man tries to spit, but misses.

Merlin’s almost choking on adrenaline. If the man really does not know, he’s truly, really lost, with Harry off his maps, and his life sacrificed for nothing. He might as well turn himself in, because he does not see much point to playing hide and seek with Kingsman. Kingsman always wins. But Acosta must be lying, he absolutely must be. Without the complicity of the locals, the museum operation would not even make any sense, so Merlin clutches the man’s balls tighter and purrs, "You saw my friend back there at the museum? Well, he's my puppy. And you don't want to get me angry."

All things considered, this is probably true, he notes distantly: Merlin is the scarier of the two, by far. Harry did what he did because he did not have a choice, and because he did not know any better. Merlin, however, made his choices every step of the way, knowing their human consequences and not caring regardless. He does not have anything but his choices to blame for where he ended up, which just happens to be on the floor of a dingy flat in the suburbs of Barcelona, blood streaming down his face, clutching the officer of a Spanish intelligence agency by hairy balls. He gives them an experimental squeeze, and the man throws back his head in a silent howl. 

"Right,” Merlin says when the man stills, gasping open-mouthed. “You cough up the information, or you and your balls go your separate ways. The choice's all yours. Five, four, three…"

“Montserrat,” inspector screeches. “He has a house in Montserrat.”

“See? It does not have to hurt,” he says, getting up himself and pulling the inspector up by his collar. “You are coming with me.”

With an hour to go, Merlin drives as carefully as he can, sticking to the upper speed limit but never daring to cross it. He never drove on the right side, and, technically, he does not even have a driver’s license, so being pulled over with a Centro officer tied and gagged in the boot of his car might put a definitive stop to his plans for the night.

He gets lost twice in Montserrat itself, winding one-way streets and dim light playing tricks on him. His grasp on the wheel is unsteady with sweat, and he has to pause for a precious moment which he does not have to steel his nerves. In the background, there are mountains, indistinct forms looming over houses like mangled fingers grasping at the skies.

Having finally found the right road – more by accident than by choice - Merlin kills the engine and slams the door shut. He does hope that someone finds the car before rising sun turns the boot into a deadly oven. He likes the man well enough, after all; if only he gave Merlin the address at once, it wouldn’t have come to this. He knocks on the boot in the manner that he hopes is comforting, and heads off towards the mansion.

He’s feeling slightly wobbly (maybe the knock on the head did give him a light concussion after all), so a slightly drunk walk comes naturally. He manages to get right up to the gates before the guards realize that he’s no local crawling back from a night out at a bar. Merlin shooting one of them is a dead give-away. He manages to shoot the second one before he gets his Glock out of the holster, but the third one’s farther away, and he’s trouble. Merlin veers to the left, ducking behind a gatepost, and listens to the bullets chipping away at cement. Time to announce his arrival, he decides, and throws a lighter grenade.

Lighter grenades were one of his extracurricular experiments, and he was not yet sure if they had enough power to them. He winces his way through the explosion, and nods as a disconnected arm plops down on the pavement not three steps away from him. He casts a quick glance at the blood-spattered wristwatch on it. Six minutes to midnight.

He races up the driveway towards the entrance in blissful post-blast silence, hoping that he is in the right place, that the time is right, that he can turn everything back and, for once in his life, win. There are no guards at the doors. The hallway is empty. It was all a shitty plan anyway.

Merlin considers rushing back to the car, but there’s not much he can change by this point. He does not have the plan of the building, so he wanders to the right, hoping to see some signs that the house at least belonged to the right man, that the men he killed at least belonged to the organization involved in human trafficking, god knows what else, and dubious taste in naming.

The room he wanders into must be a dining room, oak-paneled walls lined with somber if kitschy portraits. There’s a pink toy elephant in the corner. Merlin feels about ready to throw up.

He walks on, clutching at walls. There’s more and more weight to his theory about a concussion. The house seems perfectly normal, lived in, quiet; he can almost sense the lingering smell of the sleeping, sweat and dust. Merlin is ready to turn back when his hearing finally clears somewhat.

There’s distant chanting rolling down the corridors; as he stills to figure out which way it is coming from, a huge cuckoo clock starts beating. Merlin rushes on.

He crashes into the glass doors to the patio and stumbles forward in the rain of shards right as the Grand Master, or some other bastard in a gaudy ceremonial robe – Merlin does not care much about formalities by that point – raises his arms over a prostrate form on the floor. Merlin shields his already hurt head from the shards with an outstretched arm, a lighter grenade clutched in his fist.

“This is a grenade. Freeze,” he yells. The audience looks unimpressed, so he adds, “Grenado? Grenadio? Does anybody speak English here?”

At least nobody makes any rash movements, which gives him a second to take a closer look at the form on the floor. With a tightening in his chest, he recognizes Harry, beat-up, with blood caked in his hair, but breathing. He himself probably does not look any better. They can still get their happy ending.

“Right, I believe that one is mine,” Merlin says, looking up at the Grand Master. “If you could be a sugar, erase one of those symbols there and let him go, this need not end in blood.”

The Grand Master raises an eyebrow. "Do you think he even cares? Do you think he is capable of caring, in your human sense of the word?" he says, with what sounds like genuine sympathy.

Thank God the man speaks English, Merlin thinks. Would have been a bloody farce if nobody did. 

"All successful relationships are built on compromise," says Merlin in his best lecturing tone, usually reserved for explaining his newest gadgets to agents. "He might be a monster, but he gives wonderful backrubs. Besides, I'm not without faults either. It works."

The Grand Master does not deign him with an answer, and raises his arms again. Merlin does not know what his gestures mean, but he does not like the way Harry’s body twitches painfully to their rhythm. At least Harry opens his eyes, and they widen in surprise for a second when he notices Merlin, but then a grimace of pain contorts his features. 

"Like hell you will," Merlin says, crossing his arms over his chest. Harry might be a scary monster so ancient that there are no words for him in any language that currently exists, and if there's anything to Harry that is not a monster, it is not immediately apparent, but he is _his_ monster. Nobody can hurt what he claimed as his and live. 

“Drop your weapons,” a heavily-accented voice yells behind him. Merlin turns minutely; there are four guards behind him, their guns trained firmly on him. He rolls his eyes. As if the evening was not shitty enough as is-

He hopes Arthur gave him the correct text of the incantation. It is correct enough for Harry to have recognized the first syllables when they first met, he thinks with sudden relief, his fingernails digging deep into his palms. Harry is a smart little prick, and with unlimited power he’ll figure something out. Merlin starts chanting.

“Merlin, no!” Harry yells, rushing at the invisible barrier of symbols around him, but Merlin pays him no mind.

Harry will be so pissed with him, Merlin thinks, but that won’t be his problem anymore, will it?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #inexorable tentacles are inexorable
> 
> #they will learn eventually (or by next chapter, as the case might be)
> 
> And the fic just jumped from mature to explicit, so, in case anybody has not realized that this was headed for awkward tentacle smut, fair warning: awkward tentacle smut has arrived.

When Merlin was a boy, at the ripe old age of ten still prone to think of himself as a person strong and quite grown-up, he once waded into the sea during a storm. He was cautious enough not to wander in deep, but when the water barely reached past his ankles, a wave knocked him down, and then waves just kept rolling over him, keeping him down, sand scraping his knees raw, the sea lapping greedily at his face with slimy seaweed tongues. He tried to scream, but all he got for the effort was a mouthful of sand and salty water; he could not get up, and he could not breathe. This feels a lot like that moment.

Nothing changes until he's about three lines in, words tripping off his tongue in a breathless rush. He only hopes that he'll manage to finish the incantation before the guards get a chance to regain their composure and riddle him with bullets. Nobody misses at this distance. And then, it hits him all at once. This is like the first time he touched Harry's shadows, only magnified, twisted and glorious in its self-sufficient otherness. The alien darkness is dragging him under, nebulous swirls unfurling from the still center of space. What seemed like a random assortment of atoms and dead spaces suddenly falls into inexorable patterns around him, and he's about to laugh at the exhilarating orderliness of it all.

His legs give out under him. Pushed to the floor by the weight of the hovering empty space above and around, he shakes his head to clear his mind, and concentrates on speaking. As his mind drifts again, he hits the floor with a fist, and the surge of pain gets him back to his body, if only for a moment. He's too weak to even raise his head, so all he sees are previously neat Oxfords, now slightly scuffed, step lightly out of the circle of symbols, the shadows springing up around them. He can barely hear anything over the elusive whispering in the spaces he earlier thought of as empty and lifeless, the voices are still obscure, but if he could only-

As he breathes out the last syllables of the incantation, a long splash of blood falls on the floor in front of him. The whispers grow quieter, and he tries grasping at them, reaches for the melting distant radiance, but he is hopelessly moored in this shoddy world eons away, in a slipshod form- he tries to get up, but falters. He closes his eyes and listens; the bodies just like his are rippling and ripping around him, writhing in pain that matters little, and worries him even less.

This feels like a betrayal, this longing for that which is not his, and will never be. He makes a tally of the things that are doubtlessly his: his head hurts, and there's a new bruise on his knee from where he fell, and he has nowhere to return to anymore; a mercy, he might have called this paltry lingering of his consciousness, but not anymore.

And then, Harry's all over him, pulling him up, tilting his head to catch Merlin's gaze.

"That thing you did," gasps Harry, clutching at his shoulders so hard it hurts, torn between wanting to shake him and to hug him, "That thing there was a bloody stupid thing."

The shadows stay at bay, cautiously not touching Merlin, poised behind Harry's back. Merlin squints a little to better focus on Harry's face. There are specks of blood on it, both his and not, and under them, freckles. His lower lip is pulled down in a pout. Merlin cups Harry's face with his palms, bracketing out everything that is not him from Harry's field of vision. It did not hit Merlin till that moment, but now that it does, it is overwhelming, exhilarating: he made it. He leans in and covers Harry's lips with his, because it seems like the thing to do.

Harry stills for a moment, and then pushes him back at arm's length, scrutinizing his face with doubt.

"I'm not gay," Merlin says after a pause, not that it matters much under the circumstances, not that it changes anything.

Harry huffs with indignation. "And I'm not human. I'm pretty sure that LGBT does not stand for Loveable Gods of Bygone Times."

"I made it," Merlin says, and the words make it final, both the joy and the horror of it. "You said I had a chance, and I made it."

Harry lets go of him and takes a cautious step back, his shoe splashing in a puddle of cooling blood.

"This is not bonding proper yet," he says, not looking at Merlin.

"This is you, tethering me to yourself. Ever thought of what would happen to a silk string if you tethered a battleship on it?" Merlin does not see much point to answering, so Harry continues. "It would snap, sooner rather than later. So will you, without a link back, and that second stage is where things usually go tits-up."

No wonder it felt almost anticlimactic, making a grand sacrifice and not having anything taken; except that it wouldn't work like that, of course it wouldn't. "Right," he says, "What do we do now?"

He can swear that there's a blush slowly spreading down Harry's neck. "Well obviously, we copulate."

For a moment, Merlin just stares at him, and then he starts laughing at the incongruity of it all, fully expecting Harry to join in. When Harry does not, he fixes him with a glare. "Wait, you are not taking a piss."

Harry looks almost offended. "Trust me, wasn't us who suggested copulation as a way to seal the deal either. That's all your kin. 'This is how we do things here,' and all. We obliged, really."

Merlin sizes him up, but he is fairly certain that Harry's telling the truth.

"Why is it always sex, and not, I don't know, drinking your ichor?" he asks cautiously.

"It's blood, thank you very much."

"Be that as it may. Why not sacrifice small animals?"

"Would you rather sacrifice a hamster and drink my blood?" asks Harry with genuine interest.

Merlin feels suddenly nauseous.

"No, guess not."

"Fine then." Harry snaps, and starts unbuttoning his shirt. 

"Wait, you honestly suggest doing it here? Over the cooling corpses of your enemies?" Merlin gestures around until Harry obliges.

They wander the corridors in search of a bedroom; in the first one they find, the bed looks well slept-in, and Merlin walks on, to drag out the time more than anything. It is not like STDs will be his primary concern if he does get his mind wiped, and Harry, for all he knows, might even be immune, depending on how his particular fusion of human and cosmic crazy works. Merlin would like to inquire into that later, if there is a 'later' for him.

The next bedroom they find features a fairly ridiculous four poster bed. Merlin sniffs at the sheets, and they seem clean enough. Whoever was meant to sleep in it, and he did not have much by way of taste, is probably chilling disemboweled in the patio, Merlin realizes. He sits down awkwardly at the side of the bed and pulls a small notebook out of his breast pocket.

"Listen, this is important. If I'm in no state to drive after, there's a SEAT down the road. Let inspector Acosta out of the boot. My jet is at this aerodrome not far from Barcelona, and if you remind them about the Khyber Pass, they will lend you a pilot."

"Of course you'll be able to drive," Harry huffs, but does not stop Merlin from neatly writing down the address. Feeling daring, Merlin folds the piece of paper up and tucks it into a pocket of Harry's trousers, his fingers lingering a moment longer than they should have.

Harry uncertainly offers, "I can crank up the charm. People killed their children with their own bare hands to mate with me."

And for a second, Merlin can feel it rubbing at the periphery of his mind, the urge to spread himself open, to bend, and whine, and plead. He grits his teeth, and the illusion passes as suddenly as it washed over him.

"I'd rather do it of my own volition," he says, swallowing with an effort.

"Thought so," Harry chuckles, suddenly young and vulnerable. As he undresses, his shadow dances behind him, filling the room with dank darkness of other places that shouldn't ever come so near. Merlin does not look at him as he carefully folds his own clothes. If it falls to Harry to dress him afterwards, he'd rather not be lugged around with his shirt inside-out.

"Right," he finally says, plopping down on the bed and placing his palms on his knees. "If this might be the last thing I ever feel, we'd better make it good."

And at that, he finally looks up at Harry. The shadows go still and get blurred in uncertain light filtering in through the windows. Now Harry looks completely human, a flexible pale form, spindly limbs and reddish hairs on his chest. Under different circumstances, Merlin might want him; still wants him, he realizes, alien and ill-fitting and _his_. Placing his palms over Harry's hips, he pulls him closer.

With a giggle, Harry, ever ticklish, slips out of his grip and scoots down on the bed. As he takes Merlin's still limp cock into his mouth, Merlin's about to stop him, for this is too soon, feels wrong, parched-mouthed awkwardness drowning out the possibility of pleasure, but then he relents. It is comforting rather than arousing, but he has already seen Harry drool over his pillow, and dance for the misshaped monstrosities worshiping him as their god, and he has seen Harry kill. After that, watching Harry's head bob over his groin seems almost nothing out of the ordinary. He tugs gently at Harry's hair, and it is feathery and soft under his touch. 

Harry swirls his tongue around the head of his cock, toying at the slit, and, distantly, Merlin feels the first stirring of arousal. His hips buck to the rhythm of those clever lips almost against his will, and he is rewarded by Harry chuckling; the vibration reverberates up his spine. He pulls Harry up, their cocks grinding together for a moment at an awkward angle. Harry takes it as his cue, and suddenly turns dead serious.

"Close your eyes," Harry says, and adds frantically, "No, really, close your eyes if you have any residual fondness for your retinas. I mean it."

He kisses Merlin's eyelids, right then left, a wet and ticklish, oddly chaste touch of the still puffy lips. After a pause, ashamed, he adds, "Also, I'd rather not see your eyes go blank."

Whatever erection Merlin managed to maintain to that point, withers. Without paying him any heed, Harry rifles in his pile of clothing for his tie and wraps it around Merlin's head, covering his eyes. Merlin is momentarily soothed by the touch of cool silk to his skin, by the fingers ghosting gently over the nape of his neck. This is familiar, he'd done this before. This he can deal with. But then, panic rises again, and he sits up with a start, gasping, grasping at empty air in front of him. He's helpless, he's lost, and there's nothing that can be done. A cool palm presses over his heart.

"Shhh, I've got you. You know I would never hurt you, right?"

The problem is, Merlin does not know that. He does not, and naive trust is not a part of his skillset. He shakes his head frantically, so rapidly that his neck hurts. He knows that Harry's lying.

A cheek touches his cheek as Harry pulls him into an embrace. His palms run soothing circles over Merlin's shoulderblades. Harry's smell is changed, he realizes with a start. It's no longer the warm living body smell, but something shrill and distant. Somehow, that sets him at ease. He does not have to pretend it's business as usual. He tries to take stock of his life, the council flat, his favourite toys, watching Tay flow quietly through Perth, the smell of dusty furniture, Kathleen, with whom it all started, marine training and Arthur's offer of a better job. There's a lump in his throat. He cuts off the stream of memories before he gets to his first meeting with Harry. In his memories, there's not much of importance, but it is his, he does not have much else, and it is made all the more precious now that he is about to relinquish it all.

There's no point in drawing it out, is there? Almost imperceptibly, he nods, and Harry kisses him, his tongue probing at Merlin's lips, pushing farther. Merlin tries to relax into the touch and suck on Harry's tongue the way Kathleen sucked on his, but then tenses again. If Harry's palms are spread soothingly over his back, than what is rifling his hair? What is ghosting lower down the line of his spine? Without much warning, the shadows close around him. He goes under.

Time slows, then stops. Atoms dance around him - he thrashes, the word 'him' is insufficient, too weak in its unspoken assumption that that which surrounds him is not him; stardust, the dead particles, chipped away by those that slouch in the dark, cling to him, entombing him in matter as he desperately tries to get back to the fading echoes of the dying battle.

There's a sound at the periphery of his hearing, almost indiscernible, _merlinmerlinmerlin_ , a low desperate whine, and for a moment, with a startled laugh, he realizes that that is the word encapsulating him in some distant place not here and not now, and then there are lips on his lips. The distracting reminder of the body he's about to slough off vexes and galls.

He tries to shove the distraction away, but then something pushes into him, and for a moment, he comes to, cool sheets under his back. He is impaled on shadows, he realizes, shadow tendrils pushing in and out of his arse. He tries to budge through the burning and dislocate them, but Harry holds him down on the bed with his palms on Merlin's shoulders, _Merlin, please-_ A knee presses in between his thighs, making space for the shadows as another tendril probes at the rim and then slides in, stretching him even more. His legs convulse; Harry presses his fingers to Merlin's lips, and Merlin bites down on them, meaning to hurt.

As the fingers are replaced with another curious shadow tendril pushing deep into his throat, Merlin gags and coughs, but then his concentration slips again. Water washes over him, and silence. He is the only thinking being in miles and miles and millennia, biding his time, lulled by the slow drift of the land masses. He feels the earth cool slowly under and around him, no longer sharp and burning, turning complacent and lukewarm instead. Occasionally, he can still hear the gnawing of those blind creatures that chew dark desolate tunnels through time, but not often, not anymore. He howls, extinguishing the stars, but the only things that could answer him are hungry and mad. He sinks ever deeper into the ocean, and something starts around him, minute scattering and swirling.

The same water that almost drowned him all those millennia later, he sees with sudden clarity, gave life to his kind. He grasps at the pronoun encapsulating his distinctness from all the other seething swarming particles around him. He calls himself Merlin. His whole body hurts; he arches to press closer to another warm body on the bed, to rub against it with his straining cock.

He stretches, then stills, taking stock of the memories that are not his, of the shadow limbs that are not quite his, but not quite not-his by this point either. Gently, he makes them withdraw, leaving his body aching and empty.

"Merlin," he hears. Harry's voice is hoarse and scared. Merlin crumples the tie covering his eyes, low light blinds him for a second. "Merlin."

Harry's lips do not move. His voice rings out inside Merlin's head.


	11. Chapter 11

_England, two days later_

Merlin knew that his actions would necessarily have consequences, and he was ready to pay with his own life; just not with Arthur’s.

"Bollocks, I'm coming with you," Harry says, crossing his arms over his chest, his chin jutted out in stubborn determination.

But Merlin is of the firm belief that the disappointment of those one betrayed and death are the two things that you walk into alone, or not at all. As he brushes past Harry, his palm lingers over his shadows for a moment in a fleeting caress.

This past couple of days, Harry stalks and hovers, as if to make sure that he is alive; whenever Merlin looks up at him, which is not often, there's a nervous toothy grin on his face. Shadows coil over Merlin as he falls asleep, and when he wakes, there’s a whiff of something cold and distant, not even remotely human, on his pillow. Merlin tries not to touch Harry if he can help it, and goes beetroot red when he shifts in his seat and is rewarded with an ache in his arse. He’s taking it slow; after all, he’s in it for life.

A chasm runs through his mind like a recent welt, angry and swollen, the whispering deep lapping at the surface. This Merlin did not expect, the old rage and hurt at the back of his mind, and he does his best to keep it at bay, but it is still there, like a nagging headache.

He pauses in front of Arthur’s cell for a moment, but then determinedly strides in, knowing that, if he lingered any longer, he would never gather enough courage. He hopes Arthur knows that he refused to testify against him, out of guilt, deference and respect. Not that it changes anything, because Harry's testimony is proof enough. Harry is the sole guarantor of the crown's claim over certain more distant recesses of reality, and Arthur’s attempt to hand that over constitutes treason.

"You were stupid," Arthur says, standing up to meet him. "I forgive you. I hope you can forgive yourself."

This final mercy is undeserved, and stings like a whip. Merlin goes down on one knee, and kisses his hand.

Somewhere, someone decided that Arthur’s death would be more conspicuous than the alternative, but wiping Arthur’s memories of most of his life and sending him to live out the rest of his days on some remote estate seems to Merlin a fate worse than death.

Guards come; midway to the room where the procedure is to take place, Harry catches up with them. He falls a step behind Merlin, a silent and furious presence, and Merlin relaxes against his will, leaning back into the shadows. The touch of the shadows no longer sends him reeling, the sweeping sensation of solitude and emptiness replaced bit by bit by something familiar and oddly comforting. Merlin is getting used to treading the thin ice over the abyss.

Arthur walks on, proud and seemingly impassive. It is only at the very last turn of the corridor that his step falters, and he freezes, suddenly shaking. A doctor rushes forward to sedate him.

Harry observes the whole scene dispassionately, Merlin notes with disgust. He knows that unless he does something, the horror will set in, so he reaches out and takes his hand, squeezes it hard enough to feel the fine bones under his skin.

Merlin drags Harry to his office, and the moment the door slams shut behind them, he crushes his lips to Harry’s. Distantly, he feels his urgency reverberate through the expanses where shadows lurk as Harry crumples the front of his shirt with both fists.

As a low whine catches at the back of his throat, Merlin frantically unbuttons their trousers, hoists Harry up on the table and for a moment presses his forehead to Harry’s. He wants the flurry of thoughts in his head to still and stop, he wants not to be horrified at the changes that he does not know how to process, he wants a release. Harry’s still soft, so Merlin cups his balls, knuckles pressing at the tender skin behind them, and grinds his dick against Harry’s. Uncharitably and mirthlessly, he thinks: this is what he betrayed everything for, _this_. He misses the biting clarity which Harry's shadows afforded him for a while. Merlin bites on his neck, hard enough to hurt and leave traces, not hard enough to draw blood. 

As Harry hardens, Merlin presses their cocks together, his dry palm not affording much of a glide. He rocks back and forward, the slide intense rather than pleasant, and pushes up into the heat and touch. Harry locks his ankles behind Merlin’s back, keeping him still, pulling him closer, his boy, his monster, and for once, the mark of belonging chills Merlin to the bones. With his free hand, he covers the nape of Harry’s neck, the vulnerable soft spot under unruly hair.

Pulling away slightly, Harry makes a grand show of licking his palm, a borrowed gesture, calculated for visual effect on someone long gone, but it does the trick. Merlin lets Harry push his palm out of the way and replace it with his, Harry’s fingers ghosting over his cock, and then crushing their erections together in a firm grip. Merlin tries to match their rhythms, holds his breath for a second to listen to Harry’s laboured panting. Harry’s eyes are wild and lost, as if this, the needs and wants of his own body, took him by surprise. Merlin leans forward, pushing Harry down on the table, and squeezes a wisp of shadows in his fist, pulling the tendrils apart, burrowing his fingers deeper into them. Harry throws his head back with a moan, and Merlin barely has time to cover the back of Harry’s skull with his other hand before it connects with the tabletop, pain sparking in his knuckles. Cautiously, he pulls his palm out from under Harry’s head and plunges it into the shadows too, twisting them and demanding space for himself.

The movements of Harry’s palm become hectic. Merlin clenches his fists over the shadows, tugs and twists, and at that, Harry comes, biting his lip to still a startled moan. As he goes soft, Merlin takes a step back. He jerks at his cock mindlessly, not thinking about anything in particular at first, almost clinical in his efficiency, but then he catches Harry’s clouded gaze. Harry's still trembling minutely after his orgasm, and the hunger in his eyes pushes Merlin over the edge.

He finds a napkin on his desk, and wipes them clean as best he can, Harry first, then himself.

"Are you okay?" asks Harry thinly, not daring to look.

"All better now," says Merlin smugly, and saying it makes it true, or at least true enough. He places a palm on Harry's shoulder, reveling in warm sweaty skin, giddy with the smell of sex and the startling familiarity of the other's body. He presses his nose to Harry's collarbone, trying to sniff out the other, incomprehensible thing behind the disheveled front.

Going from polite interest straight to being joined for life is the stuff of his nightmares, but against the backdrop of Harry’s magnitude Merlin relaxes and for once dares to acknowledge not only the challenges of his position, but also the joys. Against all odds, Merlin saved the creature that won't ever admit that it needed saving; when he thinks of not seeing its twisted and desolate time-swept spaces, his breath catches in his throat. He acted when he needed to, the way he needed to, and it sufficed. His actions don’t have the final elegance of Arthur’s meticulous schemes, or the chaotic exuberance of Harry’s, but they are his, and that is enough, he thinks, relaxing into his own skin.

He loves him, Merlin thinks, even if the word does not measure up to the beauty and desolation of the empty distances, even if Harry probably does not configure the notion in a way conceivable in paltry human terms. Merlin loves him without necessarily liking him, or at least not all of him, because Harry is magnificent and lets others be so, and because Harry is his, and because someone has to. Merlin repeats the thought for good measure, but does not say it out loud. Instead, he pulls his trousers back up.

"Before he was Arthur, he was Galahad," Merlin says without looking at Harry. "That's the vacancy that we will be filling. I’ll offer you as my candidate, since I'm staying here anyway, and the Templars declared you a grail. Seems fitting."

" _The_ Grail, if you please," Harry huffs with great indignity.

That's when Merlin starts laughing. He laughs, and laughs, and does not know how to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And after that, in my mind it all becomes pretty canon-compliant.
> 
> Thank you so much to all of you who dared to read the weird AU, and to those sweet souls who left kudos or commented: it helped a lot against the usual refrain of "Nothing works and everything hurts." It's been a super-fun adventure for me: thank you for your company! <3


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